Truly Amazing Images From Hubble Space Telescope!

Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope of the Cat's Eye Nebula

In this view of the center of the magnificent barred spiral galaxy NGC 1512, the Hubble telescope reveals a stunning 2,400 light-year-wide circle of infant star clusters.

Source: J. P. Harrington (U. Maryland) & K. J. Borkowski (NCSU) HST, NASA

Astronomers generally believe that the giant bar, which is too faint to be seen in this image, funnels the gas to the inner ring, where massive stars are formed within numerous star clusters. Located 30 million light-years away, NGC 1512 is a neighbor of our Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of a rare opportunity to record Saturn when its rings were edge-on, resulting in a unique movie featuring the nearly symmetrical light show at both of the giant planet's poles.

It takes Saturn almost thirty years to orbit the Sun, with the opportunity to image both of its poles occurring only twice during that time.



Really Quite Amazing and Unique Images!
Saturn Rings are very Unusual!

Source: NASA, ESA, and Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester)

World's Most Expensive Speeding Ticket: $ 290,000 !

   I found this story very amazing indeed!
If you're going to set the record for the world's most expensive speeding ticket, you may as well do it in style. That seems to be the reasoning behind a Swiss driver who was caught driving his Ferrari Testarossa in a small village at 100 km/h in January 2010. A court in the northeastern Swiss canton of St. Gallen requested the man dip into his over-$23 million fortune to the tune of $290,000. The fine beat a previous Swiss speeding ticket record of more than $100,000, issued to a Porsche driver in Zurich in 2008, after a string of previous traffic offences.

Story by John Leblanc of MSN
 Photo courtesy of Ferrari

Library Book Overdue for 45 Years Finally Returned

                                  Unique  Old Books!

LONDON - It's common to return a library book late - but not by half a century.
Staff at a British library say they were surprised and puzzled when they received a book that was 45 years overdue through their mailbox.


Alison Lawrie, the principal assistant at Dinnington Library, near northern England's Sheffield, says the Penguin first edition copy of "Quatermass and the Pit" by Nigel Kneale was due back on Oct. 15, 1965.

She says the borrower remains a mystery because the library records don't go back that far, and the sender didn't attach a letter or note with the book.
Lawrie said Friday the sender need not worry about a hefty fine.
She says: "If the person who returned the book wants to come forward, we'd love to know the story behind it."


Stock Photography & Copyright by Soren Breiting.

The Smallest Town in the USA

Hidden among the cornfields along highway 55 in northwestern Minnesota on some of the flattest land you'll ever see is a little town called Tenney. Having recently discovered that America's smallest town was only three hours away, my curiosity finally got the best of me. So I rose early on Saturday morning and made the three-hour drive in 2 hours and 57 minutes, took some pictures, and then made it back in time for lunch.

The Youngest Girl to Row Across the Atlantic Ocean Alone

Katie Spotz, 22, of Mentor, Ohio, rows as a Guyana Coast Guard escorts from behind upon arrival to shore in Georgetown, Guyana, Sunday, March 14, 2010. Spotz, who set out from Dakar, Senegal on Jan. 3, completed a solo journey across the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday to claim a record as the youngest person to accomplish the feat.

Seventy days without using her legs for anything other than rowing movements, and suddenly, Spotz wondered if this might be the first in more than two months that she would fail.
              
"It was a bit nerve-wracking," Spotz said via phone Sunday night

Amazing Solar

Panels!

Photos by Julie Gibson of Associated Press

Story of Plants That Have Feelings

Most people would find it hard to believe that plants have feelings. Recent studies have proven that plants do have feelings. According to the peer reviewed journal Plant Physiology, plants are capable of identifying danger. Botanist Bill Williams said, “plants not only seem to be aware and feel pain, they can even communicate.” Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird who cowrote of “The Secret Life of Plants” said, “Plants are living, breathing, communicating creatures.”




The fact that “plants have feelings” has been recorded repeatedly in books in China since ancient times. Here is one account that occurred during the Tang Dynasty.



Monk Su of Xing-Shan Temple had some candlenut trees on the grounds that he planted years ago. In the summer months sap from the candlenut trees dripped from the leaves. If it got on your clothing, just like motor oil, it could not be washed off. Many officials from the royal court would come to tour the temple during summer. One time the high officials from the State of Zhao came to the temple for a summer vacation, however they disliked the candlenut trees because of the sap they dripped. They told Monk Su, “Please cut those trees down, and we'll give you a pine tree for every candlenut tree you cut down.”



In the evening, Monk Su jokingly told the trees, “I planted you some twenty years ago, but people dislike you for your sap. Next year, if your sap drips down again, I'll use you as firewood.”



After that, the sap no longer dripped down from these candlenut trees.

Crystal Caves of Mexico

The Naica Mine of Chihuahua, Mexico, is a working mine that is known for its extraordinary crystals. Naica is a lead, zinc and silver mine in which large voids have been found, containing crystals of selenite (gypsum) as large as 4 feet in diameter and 50 feet long. The chamber holding these crystals is known as the Crystal Cave of Giants, and is approximately 1000 feet down in the limestone host rock of the mine. The crystals were formed by hydrothermal fluids emanating from the magma chambers below. The cavern was discovered while the miners were drilling through the Naica fault, which they were worried would flood the mine. The Cave of Swords is another chamber in the Naica Mine, containing similar large crystals.

The largest natural crystals on Earth have been discovered in two caves within a silver and zinc mine near Naica, in Chihuahua, Mexico, according to mine officials. Reaching lengths of over 20 feet, the clear, faceted crystals are composed of selenite, a crystalline form of the mineral gypsum.