Revolver Porn: Smith and Wesson style

                                  Left to Right: S&W 28-2, 586-2, 586, 686-3, 13-1, 10-7, 442-1

Flying past Triton

What would it look like to fly past Triton, the largest moon of planet Neptune? Only one spacecraft has ever done this -- and now, for the first time, images of this dramatic encounter have been gathered into a movie. On 1989 August 25, the Voyager 2 spacecraft shot through the Neptune system with cameras blazing. Triton is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon but has ice volcanoes and a surface rich in frozen nitrogen. The first sequence in the video shows Voyager's approach to Triton, which, despite its unusual green tint, appears in approximately true color. Themysterious terrain seen under the spacecraft soon changed from light to dark, with the terminator of night soon crossing underneath. After closest approach, Voyager pivoted to see the departing moon, now visible as a diminishing crescent. Next July, assuming all goes well, the robotic New Horizons spacecraft will make a similar flight past Pluto, an orb of similar size to Triton.

Via APOD

Hang on, we're bending space and time.

Via Ex Texan Wannabe

Gotta memorize some of these

Cool science - see the sound

Hat tip: Bits and Pieces

No cool skater dogs allowed

Smart, SMART, SMART, SMART, diplomacy

Brought to you by the smartest people in the world.  So smart that the IQ scale can't even register their brains.   Just ask Michael Beschloss.

Hillary and Obama own this.

  "Islamist militias in Libya took control of nearly a dozen commercial jetliners last month, and western intelligence agencies recently issued a warning that the jets could be used in terrorist attacks across North Africa."

"Intelligence reports of the stolen jetliners were distributed within the U.S. government over the past two weeks and included a warning that one or more of the aircraft could be used in an attack later this month on the date marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports."

“There are a number of commercial airliners in Libya that are missing,” said one official. “We found out on September 11 what can happen with hijacked planes.”

First, Benghazi, then we are run out of our main embassy in Tripoli, and now there is a chance of the return of the airliners we sold them, with the blessings of their God.

It takes a special kind of genius to get here, and only the Progs possess it.

Silent death from above

Tuesdays can be like that too.

Face of the wild

Your feel good video of the day

For all our faults, in many ways we still are willing to help out a total stranger just because it's the right thing to do.



Via Ace

Little Bird, Arapahoe - by Frank Rinehart, 1898

WWII Corsair flight in Kiwiland

Proof that the US Airforce will build anything if their engineers can imagine it.

Lockheed A-12R

The Lockheed A-12R “Double-headed eagle” was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft with 4 HALO jumpers.

This would make me real nervous. Target in the sky. Can SMOD be far away?

 Why would the sky look like a giant target? Airglow. Following a giant thunderstorm over Bangladesh in late April, giant circular ripples of glowing air appeared over Tibet, China, aspictured above. The unusual pattern is created by atmospheric gravity waves, waves of alternating air pressure that can grow with height as the air thins, in this case about 90 kilometers up. Unlikeauroras powered by collisions with energetic charged particles and seen at high latitudes, airglow is due to chemiluminescence, the production of light in a chemical reaction.

Via APOD