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Smallest baby in the world! Born weighing 10oz - 21wks 6dys

(HT: Andrew Jackson)

What a gracious gift of God! It is all of grace!

"Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments" (Psalm 119:73).

The solar system's largest moon, Ganymede, is captured here alongside the planet Jupiter in a color picture taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 3, 2000.

Ganymede is larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto and Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Both Ganymede and Titan have greater surface area than the entire Eurasian continent on our planet. Cassini was 26.5 million kilometers (16.5 million miles) from Ganymede when this image was taken. The smallest visible features are about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) across.

The bright area near the south (bottom) of Ganymede is Osiris, a large, relatively new crater surrounded by bright icy material ejected by the impact, which created it. Elsewhere, Ganymede displays dark terrains that NASA's Voyager and Galileo spacecraft have shown to be old and heavily cratered. The brighter terrains are younger and laced by grooves. Various kinds of grooved terrains have been seen on many icy moons in the solar system. These are believed to be the surface expressions of warm, pristine, water-rich materials that moved to the surface and froze.

Ganymede has proven to be a fascinating world, the only moon known to have a magnetosphere, or magnetic environment, produced by a convecting metal core. The interaction of Ganymede's and Jupiter's magnetospheres may produce dazzling variations in the auroral glows in Ganymede's tenuous atmosphere of oxygen.

Technology Tuesday is the effort to highlight and point us to the glory of God by pondering His great works. As the Psalmist explains, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). "Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!" (Psalm 33:8). Oh, how great is our God!!

Nighttime clouds detected for the first time on Mars help to keep the planet’s surface warm after sunset when temperatures drop, a new study suggests.

The nocturnal clouds are five times thicker than their daytime counterparts and hover close to the ground, almost like a fog.

Technology Tuesday is the effort to highlight and point us to the glory of God by pondering His great works. As the Psalmist explains, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). "Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!" (Psalm 33:8). Oh, how great is our God!!

The poet Walt Whitman said, “I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are.” But where are they, exactly? Constellations cover the sky. They also look flat - the stars all appear to be at the same distance. Appearances can be deceiving.

We often refer to stars that look bright as “big,” and to their fainter companions as “small” stars. Are the bright ones really big? Are the faint ones actually small? Maybe the bright ones are closer and the fainter ones are farther away. Could it possibly be any other way? This is astronomy so the answer is “yes!”

The distance to any celestial object is one of the most important things we can know about it. Without that single critical piece of data, everything else is almost meaningless. To understand the structure and organization of things celestial, we must know distances. The Hipparcos satellite has provided us with accurate and precise stellar distances, revolutionizing our picture of the universe.

With Starry Night software it’s easy to find distances to individual stars. In doing so, we discover that some nearby stars are dim, and some bright stars are nearby. We also find that some of the brightest stars are very distant. When a distant star is also a bright star, it means the star is highly energetic; shining with hundreds or thousands of times the output of our Sun!

How Far are the Constellations?

Technology Tuesday is the effort to highlight and point us to the glory of God by pondering His great works. As the Psalmist explains, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). "Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!" (Psalm 33:8). Oh, how great is our God!!

Saturn is the second largest planet. Only Jupiter is larger. Saturn has seven thin, flat rings around it. The rings consist of numerous narrow ringlets, which are made up of ice particles that travel around the planet. The gleaming rings make Saturn one of the most beautiful objects in the solar system. Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus are the only other planets known to have rings. Their rings are much fainter than those around Saturn.

Saturn's diameter at its equator is about 74,900 miles (120,540 kilometers), almost 10 times that of Earth. The planet can be seen from Earth with the unaided eye, but its rings cannot. Saturn was the farthest planet from Earth that the ancient astronomers knew about. They named it for the Roman god of agriculture.

Read more about Saturn: Worldbook @ NASA.

Other facts:
Saturn's beautiful rings are not solid. They are made up of particles of ice, dust and rock -- some as tiny as grains of sand, some much larger than skyscrapers.

It's pretty windy on Saturn. Winds around the planet's equator can reach 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) per hour. In comparison, the fastest winds on Earth reach only about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) per hour.

Saturn, the "Ringed Planet," is so far away from the Sun that it receives only about 1/80th the amount of sunlight that we receive here on Earth. Yes, the Sun appears much smaller from there.

Technology Tuesday is the effort to highlight and point us to the glory of God by pondering His great works. As the Psalmist explains, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). "Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!" (Psalm 33:8). Oh, how great is our God!!

Technology Tuesday is the effort to highlight and point us to the glory of God by pondering His great works. As the Psalmist explains, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). "Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!" (Psalm 33:8). Oh, how great is our God!!

SEATTLE--An ancient X-ray outburst from the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy caused surrounding gas clouds to glow brightly in a cosmic light show that is only now being detected.

The output likely involved the consumption of a snack equal in mass to the planet Mercury, researchers said here yesterday at the 209^th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Called Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's core is located some 27,000 light-years away and has an estimated mass of about three million suns. It is surrounded by several massive iron-rich gas clouds that glow and emit their own X-rays when struck by photons or electrons [image].

See the full story here.