Northern Lights Dazzle In Rare Display

Mashable reports:

The Northern Lights could be seen pulsating through the sky in several cities throughout North America on Tuesday evening due to a rare geomagnetic storm. The colorful display was also caught on camera in areas within Canada and Europe. The geomagnetic storm, which is just one notch below the highest category of solar storm, began at about 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center. The geomagnetic storm is the result of a pair of coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, that left the Sun on March 15 and are now interacting with Earth's atmosphere and geomagnetic field.

Astronomers Find "Mega-Earth"

Via the Washington Post:

Astronomers have discovered a surprising planet, a rocky world with 17 times the mass of Earth. There have been “Super-Earths” discovered before, but this one is in a league of its own. The scientists call it a “Mega-Earth.” Discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and announced Monday at an astronomy meeting in Boston, this planet, officially named Kepler-10c, scrambles the equations that dictate how massive a rocky planet can be without ballooning into a Jupiter-like gas giant. The theorists didn’t see this coming. The orthodoxy was that, beyond about 10 Earth masses, a planet would hold on to so much hydrogen gas that it would become like Jupiter or Saturn. Kepler-10c suggests that plus-size planets can stay rocky, with clearly defined surfaces, rather than becoming gaseous and bloated. That means there’s more real estate out there for life as we know it on Earth.

Mega-Earth is too close to its sun to be habitable and only has a 45-day year.

Live From The International Space Station

The International Space Station has launched a live stream.

One of the latest missions from the ISS is kind of amazing. The High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment consists of four cameras that have been attached outside of the ISS. Though temperature is controlled, the cameras are exposed to the radiation from the sun, which will allow astronauts to understand how radiation affects the instruments. The cameras point down at Earth at all times, which makes for some breathtaking images. The feed will sometimes go down as the signal switches between the cameras, and it is hard to see when the ISS is on the dark side of the planet. If the cameras are down, the screen will be grey.

The cameras switch every 60 seconds or so. Stick around for a better view if the current one is all clouds.

Super Cool WTC Interactive Panorama

TIME Magazine has posted a ridiculously cool interactive panorama photo taken from above the World Trade Center. Using your cursor and the on-screen controls, you can spin around in all directions and zoom in on midtown, Brooklyn, New Jersey, even the Statue of Liberty. I'm finding it works best on Chrome so far. There goes the next hour of your evening.

Here's how they did it.

Time said it got exclusive access to the tower's spire from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site. It took eight months to design and construct a 13-foot rotating arm to which a camera with a 100-millimeter lens was mounted, the magazine said on its website. It worked on the project with Portland, Ore.-based GigaPan Systems, mechanical engineers and welders. "Over a five-hour span of orbital shooting on Sept. 28, 2013, the camera produced 567 pictures that were then stitched together digitally into a single massive — and zoomable — image of everything the eye can see in all directions," according to the website. According to GigaPan, its panoramic photography equipment is based on the same technology employed by NASA's Mars rovers to capture the images of the red planet. The panoramic image also is featured as a wrap-around cover of Time's issue hitting newsstand Friday. The issue includes an article about the 12-year construction of the building, formerly called the Freedom Tower.

Naked Stop-Motion

OSU Marching Band Does It Again

One week after they became a YouTube sensation with their moonwalking Michael Jackson, the Ohio State University marching band has again gone viral with a performance that includes Superman saving a toppling building, Harry Potter catching the golden snitch, and a striding T-rex. 7M views already.

Microscope Photography

IO9 has posted a stunning collection of photographs taken through powerful microscopes. Above is common household dust "with cat fur, long hair, twisted synthetic and woolen fibers, a pollen grain and insect remains." I posted the least gruesome example.

Tom Thum At TEDxSydney

Possibly the best beatboxer I've ever seen and the bit where he mocks German techno (5:50) really cracked me up.

(Tipped by JMG reader Fritzrth)

OREGON: Portland Timbers Pro Soccer Fan Club Display Denounces Homophobia

On Sunday the fan club for the Portland Timbers pro soccer team created the above display in support of the International Day Against Homophobia, which is this Friday. From the Major League Soccer site:

Sometimes, supporters groups' tifo displays are designed to look really cool, to recognize a player's career-long contributions to the club or even to intimidate that day's opponent with a massive pregame display that covers the entire end of a 70,000-seat stadium. And other times, the displays transcend the sport of soccer altogether, making a statement about life in general. On the same day a match in Italy – one that happened to involve United States national team midfielder Michael Bradley's club team, AS Roma – had to be momentarily halted because of racist chants aimed at opposing AC Milan players, the Timbers Army chose to spend their Sunday afternoon taking a stand against another sensitive social issue in the sports world: homophobia. The 5,000-person section used roughly 4,500 colored cards to create the display, according to Timbers Army 107 Independent Supporters Trust board member Abram Goldman-Armstrong in an e-mail exchange with MLSsoccer.com on Monday.

The article adds: "The Timbers Army will be the first of many independent supporters groups across MLS to lend their support to the 'Pride, Not Prejudice' cause this week."  Very, very cool. By the way, the Timbers won their game. (Tipped by JMG reader Lance)

Chris Hadfield - Space Oddity

In what may be the coolest clip I've ever seen, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield bid farewell to his time on the International Space Station with the below version of David Bowie's classic, Space Oddity.  Best comment on YouTube: "Most expensive music video ever."  CNET has more:

Mixed with the help of staff at the Canadian Space Agency, musician Emm Gryner, and others, the cover features a somber piano intro and modified lyrics that reference the Soyuz capsule that will return Hadfield to Kazakhstan. When the mustachioed commander sings "I'm floating in a most peculiar way" while actually floating up in space, Hadfield wins the Internet, as one commenter suggests.

From David Bowie's Facebook page: "It’s possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created."  Incidentally, Hallo Spaceboy was Bowie's 1996 single, the hit remix of which featured the Pet Shop Boys.

The Cube Is Not A Cube

Almost 7M YouTube views in three days.

Take A Stellar Tour

JMG reader BStewart23 points out this fascinating look at the galaxy.  Click on the "take a tour" button.  Start scrolling around and there goes your work productivity for today. This was created by Google, so naturally it works best in Chrome. (But it also seem to work fine in Firefox.)

Google Launches Ocean View

Clip description:

Google Maps strives to provide people around the globe with the most comprehensive, accurate and usable map of the world - including the underwater world. This ocean collection includes six of the world's most incredible underwater spots, including coral reefs (and their inhabitants) in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii. This imagery is available to millions of people through the Street View feature of Google Maps and in our Street View Gallery.

Top comment at YouTube: "There are iOS6 Maps users down there looking for their houses."

Top Ten Hipster Neighborhoods

So says Forbes Magazine.

The San Francisco-based startup Nextdoor.com helped us dig through data on more than 250 neighborhoods in the biggest U.S. cities. We assessed each area’s walkability according to Walkscore.com; the number of neighborhood coffee shops per capita (with some help from NPD Group’s report); the assortment of local food trucks (and their ranking according to Zagat’s); the number and frequency of farmers markets; the selection of locally owned bars and restaurants; and the percentage of residents who work in artistic occupations. We also factored in Nextdoor’s Neighborhood “Hipness” Index, which is based on how often words associated with hipness (for example art, gallery, designer, musician) appeared on each Nextdoor neighborhood’s site pages, and Nextdoor conducted a survey in which members sounded off on their communities.

1. Silver Lake (Los Angeles)
2. Mission District (San Francisco)
3. Williamsburg (Brooklyn)
4. Wicker Park (Chicago)
5. Pearl District (Portland OR)
6. H Street Corridor (DC)
7. East Austin (Austin)
8. Capitol Hill (Seattle)
9. The Uptown (Oakland)
10. Warehouse District (New Orleans)

Animated Tower

Swiss high schoolers manually open and close their windows to create a giant stop-motion effect. They explain how it was done at the end.

(Via Buzzfeed)

Martian Photo Coolness

You will now go waste a good chunk of your day playing with the Mars Greeley Haven 360 panorama camera. (Via Americablog)

Swimming Pool Of The Day

A glass bottom and 24 stories in the sky. I'd swim in it. It's a Holiday Inn! In China.

The View From Mars

Source.

Another Cool Subway Cavern Photo

Source. (Tipped by JMG reader Peter)

WATCH LIVE: Mars Rover Landing

Video appears after clicking play. The rover is scheduled to touch down at 1:17AM eastern time, but confirmation won't be received for about 15 minutes.