Category - Blog

How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually.

Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth’s radius. The above illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth’s Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn’s moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice.

How even this much water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth’s surface remain topics of research.

The Tokyo Skytree, twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower, and its surrounding retail and office complex opened on Tuesday with thousands lining up in the rain for a first look at the 143 billion yen ($1.8 billion) development.

Tokyo Skytree with it’s 634m tower took four years to build and surpassed the 600-metre Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China, as the world’s tallest, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa is the tallest building at 828 meters.

A tower is a structure where less than half the height is occupied by usable floor space, according to the council. The tower, which cost 65 billion yen on its own, has two observation decks, one at 350 metres and another at 450 metres. A trip to the lower deck will cost 2,000 yen.

Tomorrow (20th May) the Moon’s shadow will race across planet Earth. Observers within the 240-300 kilometer wide shadow track will be able to witness an annular solar eclipse as the Moon’s apparent size is presently too small to completely cover the Sun.

Heading east over a period of 3.5 hours, the shadow path will begin in southern China, cross the northern Pacific, and reach well into North America, crossing the US west coast in southern Oregon and northern California. Along the route, Tokyo residents will be just 10 kilometers north of the path’s center line. Of course a partial eclipse will be visible from a much larger area within North America, the Pacific, and eastern Asia.

This safely filtered telescopic picture was taken during the annular eclipse of January 15, 2010 from the city of Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India.

After 5 months of planning, Cordell Expeditions is pleased to announce a DXpedition to Heard Island, Territory of Australia, in early 2014.

Initial team members, collaborating organizations, and other resources will be announced in the near future. They will be active on all bands and all modes, implement a variety of innovative real-time communications technologies, and field a variety of scientific projects that are designed to observe and document some of the unique resources on this extraordinary island. 

The website for the 2014 DXpedition is www.cordell.org/HD.

A mere 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy really is just next door as large galaxies go.

So close, and spanning some 260,000 light-years, it took 11 different image fields from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite’s telescope to produce this gorgeous portrait of the spiral galaxy in ultraviolet light. While its spiral arms stand out in visible light images of Andromeda, the arms look more like rings in the GALEX ultraviolet view, dominated by hot, young, massive stars.

As sites of intense star formation, the rings have been interpreted as evidence Andromeda collided with its smaller neighboring elliptical galaxy more than 200 million years ago. The large Andromeda galaxy and our own Milky Way are the dominant members of the local galaxy group.

Don’t forget that this weekend is the EPC PSK DX Contest for those that are interested.

It should make an interesting event and lets hope the band conditions improve a little so we can see some ‘DX’ and not just the run of the mill stuff.

Listen out for ‘MQ0OXO’, he may make an appearance!

GB2HI will be QRV again later this week from Hilbre Island IOTA EU-120.

The team consisting of Kev M0TNX and Martin M3POG aim to be active from Thursday 17th May until Sunday 20th May, times dependant upon Tides at the location.

They will be using Vertical and Wire Dipole antennas, an Icom IC-7400 and a KL500ZC Amplifier. The Rig Interface they will be using has kindly been donated by M0AQC.

Please listen for the guys and give them your support, lets hope the good old British Weather stays OK for them too!