Jordan’s View has posted this week’s Christian Carnival. I have contributed my paper on Calvin and Piety. So for this week’s Christian posts from around the blogosphere, head over to Christian Carnival XCVI: Applying the Gospel to All of Life. For previous posts, see my Christian Carnival Archive.

-Matt Jones

Christian Carnival is being hosted this week at Eternal Revolution. To read a wide variety of thoughts from around the Christian blogosphere, head over to Christian Carnival XCV. I have contributed my post on Regent’s groundbreaking ceremony.

Classes / homework / papers / reading… lots of it. This is going to be a whirlwind end to the semester. Postings will be slightly less often. Care to write a paper for me?

-Matt Jones
לְחַיִּים

Dory over at Wittenberg Gate, who also runs it, has just posted Christian Carnival XCIV. I have contributed my brief introduction to Hebrew. Head over there and catch the variety of posts from around Christian blogosphere and also check out the Christian Carnival Archive for all the previous posts! Thanks Dory!

-Matt Jones
לְחַיִּים

Visit hetemeel.com for more of Einstein’s chalkboard.

See? Einstein visits every day, it only makes sense that you do too.

I somehow managed to find more pictures of Einstein’s chalkboard: Read full blog entry…

-Matt Jones
Ή χάρις του κυρίου ημων Ίησου Χριστου μεθ’ υμων.

Sky and Telescope had an article about this, so I figure I could be a follower. For this week’s Space Saturday, I bring you Eta (η) Carinae.

Source: HST / Nathan Smith / Jon Morse / NASA

Eta Carinae is a star in the southern hemisphere about 10,000 light years distance in the constellation Carina:

Eta Carinae is one of the most massive stars in the universe, with probably more than 100 solar masses. It is about 4 million times brighter than our local star, making it also one of the most luminous stars known. Eta Carinae radiates 99 % of its luminosity in the infrared part of the spectrum, where it is the brightest object in the sky at 10-20 microns wavelength. [source]

Some have even estimated that Eta Carinae could be upwards of 150 solar masses. The star is surrounded by the aptly named Eta Carinae Nubula (NGC 3372). The two lobes of gasses were formed after an explosion that the earth “viewed” in 1843. Because the star is so massive it expends it fuel very rapidly (which makes it very luminous - Eta Carinae emits more light in 6 seconds than the sun does all year!), astronomers think that it will go supernova and ends its life (of approximately 1 million years, as opposed to a sun type star’s 10,000 million year typical life) in the next few 100,000 years. Another distinctive feature of Eta Carinae is its long term veriation of visual magnitude (see resource links for additional information).

Sky and Telescope recently published an article that suggests Eta Carinae Has a Neighbor.

Iping and her colleagues base their conclusion on spectra taken by NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite. The team noticed that in June 2003, Eta Carinae’s far-ultraviolet flux suddenly disappeared, presumably because the companion star had swung behind the primary and was eclipsed by its thick wind. The timing of the disappearance coincided perfectly with the predictions of the binary model.

Of course there is always disagreement, but that is one thing that makes astronomy interesting.

Resources
Wikipedia - Eta Carinae
SEDS - Eta Carinae
SEDS - Super Sharp HST View of Eta Carinae
Hubblesite - Doomed Star Eta Carinae
Sky and Telescope - New Signs that Monster Star Has a Neighbor

My Space Saturday Archive - my (somewhat) weekly astronomy picture archive.

-Matt Jones
Ή χάρις του κυρίου ημων Ίησου Χριστου μεθ’ υμων.

Well that was lame. I upgraded my hosting before I left on Friday and they changed the IP address of the server (without telling me) so my blog has been down the entire weekend and I didn’t even know it! Sorry about that folks, although I am sure you will survive.

If you are one of the 8 internet users who doesn’t have Google Earth yet, go download it now. I have recently discovered two blogs that Google Earth fans should visit: Google Earth Blog and Google Earth Hacks. Both offer current information coming out of Google Earth as well as pointing out places of interest and are well worth the visit.

These are two recent high resolution Google Earth images. The left is Safeco Field, home of the Mariners, and yes, that is actually homeplate that you can see. On the right is Qwest Field, home of the Seahawks. This is actually an image of the WSU Cougars lined up for a field goal at Qwest.

Also (via Google Earth Hacks), Google, NASA to Work Together.

The two organizations have signed a memorandum of understanding that details plans for cooperation in a variety of areas, including supercomputing and “bio-info-nano convergence,” which combines the research areas of biological, information and nanotechnology to produce new materials. Google also plans to build an office, set to be “up to one million square feet” in size, in the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field. “Imagine having a wide selection of images from the Apollo space mission at your fingertips whenever you want it,” says Eric Schmidt, Google CEO. “That’s just one small example of how this collaboration could help broaden technology’s role in making the world a better place.”

It would be a beautiful thing. Instant access to the numerous amounts of imagery coming out of NASA would make me very happy. Having similar access to the galaxy as we have with Google Earth would also be cool, although you can do that with other software packages. One (that is free) that I am going to try out is Stellarium Astronomy Software. I will let you know how it is.

I am heading down to Seattle for the weekend so see you in a few days!
Ή χάρις του κυρίου ημων Ίησου Χριστου μεθ’ υμων.

UPDATE: Found another site (via SunbeltBLOG): Ogle Earth - another site that highlights the cool things that Google Earth does.