Knowledge And Wisdom

Watch Free Documentaries Online

2009-05-14T06:33:00.001-07:00

Watch free documentaries from independent film makers and worldwide feature films from BBC, CBC, PBS, HBO, Showtime, History Channel, Documentary Channel, National Geographic, Biography Channel, and much more.

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The Most Expensive Amazon.com Items

2008-09-27T08:53:00.001-07:00

Check out some of the most expensive items at Amazon.com

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OBEY Giant

2008-08-24T18:13:00.001-07:00

Obey Giant tribute page with art, t-shirts, obama t-shirts, hoodies, photos, merchandise, Andre the Giant, political t-shirts, posters and more.

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How To Get Paid Online

2008-03-13T11:02:00.001-07:00

There are a large number of things you can do online and get paid. From taking out surveys and trying free offers to reading emails or receiving text messages to clicking on links and surfing the web to shopping and dining out. You can also get paid to play games and watch movies online! And as luck would have it, you can even get paid to blog!

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Shelf Cloud Over Saskatchewan

2008-01-22T00:05:00.000-08:00

Explanation: Perhaps it's time to go inside. Such thoughts might occur to people witnessing the approach of an impressive shelf cloud. Shelf clouds are typically seen leading thunderstorms, although they may precede any well defined front of relatively cold air. Shelf clouds differ from roll clouds because shelf clouds are attached to a larger cloud system lurking above. Similarly, shelf clouds differ from wall clouds because wall clouds typically trail storm systems. The above pictured shelf cloud was photographed toward the southwest during a trip crossing the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada on the Trans-Canada Highway in 2001 August. A rising Sun illuminated the impressive cloud from the east as it advanced from the west.

King River, Tasmania

2008-01-21T18:31:00.000-08:00

Starry Night Castle

2008-01-19T15:48:00.000-08:00

Explanation: The tantalizing Pleiades star cluster seems to lie just beyond the trees above a dark castle tower in this dramatic view of The World at Night. Recorded earlier this month, the starry sky also features bright star Aldebaran below the Pleiades and a small, faint, fuzzy cloud otherwise known as Comet Holmes near picture center at the top of the field. Starry Night Castle might be an appropriate name for the medieval castle ruin in the foreground. But its traditional name is Mörby Castle, found north of Stockholm, near lake Skedviken in Norrtälje, Sweden.

'Krakatau's Child' Erupts

2007-11-09T23:34:00.000-08:00

ANAK KRAKATAU, Indonesia (AP) -- Sending a boom across the bay, the offspring of the fabled Krakatau volcano unleashes another mighty eruption, blasting smoke and red-hot rocks hundreds of feet into the sky.

Planets Over Pony Express Lake

2007-07-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

Explanation: Beautiful sunset sky colors are reflected in Pony Express Lake in this twilight skyview from northern Missouri, USA, planet Earth. Recorded on Monday, a two day old crescent Moon and brilliant planet Venus shine through thin clouds. Joining the conjunction on the right of the Moon's sunlit crescent is fellow wanderer Saturn, with Regulus, alpha star of the constellation Leo, above and right of Venus. Moonlight and Venus light streak the almost-calm lake waters.

Manhattanhenge: A New York Sunset

2007-07-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

Explanation: Today, if it is clear, well placed New Yorkers can go outside at sunset and watch their city act like a modern version of Stonehenge. Manhattan will flood dramatically with sunlight just as the Sun sets precisely on the centerline of every street. Usually, the tall buildings that line the gridded streets of New York City's tallest borough will hide the setting Sun. This effect makes Manhattan a type of modern Stonehenge, although only aligned to about 30 degrees east of north. Were Manhattan's road grid perfectly aligned to east and west, today's effect would occur on the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox, March 21 and September 21, the only two days that the Sun rises and sets due east and west. Pictured above in this horizontally stretched image, the the Sun sets down 34th Street as viewed from Park Avenue. If today's sunset is hidden by clouds do not despair -- the same thing happens twice each year, in late May and mid July. On none of these occasions, however, should you ever look directly at the Sun.

NGC 6384: Beyond The Stars

2007-07-12T17:12:00.001-07:00

Explanation: The universe is filled with galaxies. But to see them astronomers must look out beyond the stars of our galaxy, the Milky Way. For example, consider this colorful telescopic view of spiral galaxy NGC 6384, about 80 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. At that distance, NGC 6384 spans an estimated 150,000 light-years. The sharp image shows details in the distant galaxy's blue spiral arms and yellowish core. Still, the individual stars seen in the picture are all in the close foreground, well within our own galaxy. The brighter Milky Way stars show noticeable crosses, or diffraction spikes, caused by the telescope itself. This particular field of view is about 1/4 degree wide and is relatively rich in foreground stars because it looks out near the crowded center of the Milky Way.

Constellations And Cloudy Skies

2007-07-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

Explanation: Recorded earlier in July, the clouds of planet Earth reflect moonlight and a faint, reddish glow in this serene sea and skyscape. Beyond them lie the cosmic dust and star clouds of the Milky Way. The near-midnight view looks south from a beach in northern France and finds the constellation Sagittarius, the Archer, peaking above the horizon. Bright planet Jupiter rules on the right, wandering among the stars of the constellation Scorpius. Of course, the Galactic Center itself is hidden behind the Milky Way clouds in Sagittarius. To find them, just put your cursor over the picture and follow the arrow.

Shuttle Ferry

2007-07-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

Explanation: How does a space shuttle that landed in California get back to Florida for its next launch? The answer is by ferry. NASA operates two commercial Boeing 747 airplanes modified to carry a space shuttle on their backs. Designated officially as Shuttle Carrier Aircraft or SCA, the 747s were made for commercial flights but bolstered by NASA with several struts, stabilizers, and electronic monitors. Spanning about 70 meters in length, the two aircraft's combined mass is nearly 150,000 kilograms. Pictured above, the space shuttle Atlantis is shown being ferried back to NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida in September 1998.

Infrared Trifid

2007-07-07T01:55:00.000-07:00

Explanation: The Trifid Nebula, aka Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope, a well known stop in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. But where visible light pictures show the nebula divided into three parts by dark, obscuring dust lanes, this penetrating infrared image reveals filaments of glowing dust clouds and newborn stars. The spectacular false-color view is courtesy of the Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers have used the Spitzer infrared image data to count newborn and embryonic stars which otherwise can lie hidden in the natal dust and gas clouds of this intriguing stellar nursery. As seen here, the Trifid is about 30 light-years across and lies only 5,500 light-years away.

Bright Galaxy NGC 2903

2007-07-06T03:22:00.000-07:00

Explanation: Spiral galaxy NGC 2903 is only some 20 million light-years distant in the constellation Leo. One of the brighter galaxies visible from the northern hemisphere, it is surprisingly missing from Charles Messier's famous catalog of celestial sights. This impressively sharp color image shows off the galaxy's beautiful blue spiral arms. Included in the ground-based telescopic view are intriguing details of NGC 2903's central regions -- a remarkable mix of old and young star clusters with immense dust and gas clouds. In fact, NGC 2903 exhibits an exceptional rate of star formation activity near its center, also bright in radio, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray bands. Just a little smaller than our own Milky Way, NGC 2903 is about 80,000 light-years across.

Night-Shining Clouds

2007-07-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

Explanation: Alluring noctilucent or night-shining clouds lie near the edge of space, some 80 kilometers above Earth's surface. Of course, when viewed from space the clouds are more properly called polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) -- seen here for the first time in image data from the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite. The clouds form over the poles in the corresponding summer season and are now being seen more frequently at lower latitudes. This paticular view from June 11 details the PMC structures forming over the north polar region in white and blue. (Black indicates no cloud data was available.) The AIM satellite should be able to track two complete cloud seasons over both poles to investigate possible connections between the high altitude night-shining clouds and global change in the lower atmosphere.

Red, White, And Blue Sky

2007-07-04T00:05:00.001-07:00

Explanation: Contrasting colors in this beautiful sunset sky were captured on June 30 from Clear Creek Canyon Observatory in central Arizona, USA. The twilight scene includes brilliant Venus as the evening star, with a bright Saturn just above it, shining through thin clouds. The two wandering planets were a mere 1 degree apart or so, about twice the width of the full Moon rising above the eastern horizon on the other side of the sky. In fact, such serene skyviews were possible from all over planet Earth as Venus and Saturn approached a conjunction. Regulus, alpha star of the constellation Leo, is above and to the left of the close planetary pairing. At dusk, lights in tonight's sky will also feature Venus and Saturn low in the west and separated by about 2 degrees.

At The Edge Of Victoria Crater

2007-07-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

Explanation: We're going in. The robotic Opportunity rover currently rolling across Mars has been prowling around the edge of the largest crater it has visited since landing over three years ago. It has been studying Victoria crater and looking for a way in. Now scientists on Earth have decided to take a calculated risk and plan to send Opportunity right into this ancient Martian crater over the next few weeks. Pictured is Cape St. Vincent, part of the wall of Victoria Crater next to where Opportunity will descend. The wall itself appears to contain clues about the Martian terrain before the impact that created Victoria crater, and so will be studied during the daring descent. Above the crater wall, far in the distance, lays a relatively featureless Martian horizon.

Bush spares Libby from prison

2007-07-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON D.C. United States (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday spared former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby from prison, enraging Democrats who accused Bush of abusing power in a case that has fueled debate over the Iraq war.

Stalwart conservatives in Bush's Republican party had pressured him to pardon Libby -- Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff -- and saw him as the victim of an overly zealous prosecutor. He was sentenced last month to 2-1/2 years in prison for obstructing a CIA leak probe and his imprisonment was imminent.

Read the whole story at www.reuters.com

Zooming In To The Pelican Nebula

2007-07-02T02:04:00.000-07:00

Explanation: Where on the sky is the Pelican Nebula? APOD features many objects on the night sky, but usually does not have the resources to show exactly where on the night sky each objects lies. Today, thanks to inventive digital manipulations of Filipe Alves, it is possible to show you exactly where on the sky the photogenic Pelican Nebula can be found. Clicking on the above arrow will cause many browsers to download and play a spectacular movie that zooms from the perspective of an unaided human eye to that of a powerful telescope. The observatory dome visible on the right is part of Calar Alto Observatory in southern Spain. The image zooms into the constellation of Cygnus, passes the dust structure in the Pelican head housing unborn stars. Watch the video here.

Steep Cliffs On Mars

2007-07-01T21:03:00.000-07:00

Explanation: Vertical cliffs of nearly two kilometers occur near the North Pole of Mars. Also visible in the above image of the Martian North Polar Cap are red areas of rock and sand, white areas of ice, and dark areas of unknown composition but hypothesized to be volcanic ash. The cliffs are thought to border volcanic caldera. Although the sheer drop of the Martian cliffs is extreme, the drop is not as deep as other areas in our Solar System, including the 3.4-kilometer depth of Colca Canyon on Earth and the 20 kilometer depth of Verona Rupes on Uranus' moon Miranda. The above image, digitally reconstructed into a perspective view, was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the ESA's robotic Mars Express spacecraft currently orbiting Mars.

Jumbled Galaxy Centaurus A

2007-06-30T21:51:00.001-07:00

Explanation: At the center of this sharp skyscape, Centaurus A seems to be a fantastic jumble of old yellow stars, young blue star clusters, and imposing dark dust lanes. Spanning over 60,000 light-years, the peculiar elliptical galaxy is apparently the result of a collision of two otherwise normal galaxies. The left over cosmic debris is steadily being consumed by a black hole with a billion times the mass of the Sun which lies at the center of Centaurus A. It's likely that such black hole central engines generate the radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray energy radiated by Centaurus A and other active galaxies. For an active galaxy Centaurus A is close, a mere 10 million light-years away, and is well-studied by earthbound astronomers.

Cat's Eye Wide And Deep

2007-06-29T00:16:00.000-07:00

Explanation: The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the the brighter central region of this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image also combines many short and long exposures to reveal the nebula's extremely faint halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the right, some 50 million light-years beyond the Cat's Eye, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.

Astronomy Picture Of The Day

2007-06-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

A Visit from Atlantis

Explanation: This remarkable image of the space shuttle orbiter Atlantis docked with the International Space Station (ISS) was taken at a range of 190 nautical miles. To record the fast moving pair, last week astronomers at Clay Center Observatory, near Boston, Massachusetts, planet Earth, used a satellite tracking system and 25-inch diameter telescope in combination with a digital video camera. In the sharp picture, Atlantis is below and left of center. The aft view shows three main engines just below its vertical tail glinting in the sunlight. With the Sun shining from below, the body of the orbiter casts a long shadow across the ISS itself and impressive details of the ISS solar arrays used for power generation are easily visible. The large set of solar arrays installed at the lower right was delivered during this visit from Atlantis.

Astronomy Picture Of The Day

2007-06-27T07:43:00.000-07:00

Neon Saturn

Explanation: If seen in the right light, Saturn glows like a neon sign. Although Saturn has comparatively little of the element neon, a composite image false-colored in three bands of infrared light highlights features of the giant ringed planet like a glowing sign. At the most blue band of the infrared light featured, false-colored blue in the above image, Saturn itself appears dark but Saturn's thin rings brightly reflect light from our Sun. Conversely, Saturn's B ring is so thick that little reflected light makes it through, creating a dark band between Saturn's A and C rings. At the most red band of the infrared, false-colored red above, Saturn emits a surprisingly detailed thermal glow, indicating planet-wide bands, huge hurricane-like storms, and a strange hexagon-shaped cloud system around the North Pole. In the middle infrared band, false-colored green, the sunlit side of Saturn's atmosphere reflects brightly. The above image was obtained in late February by the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting about 1.6 million kilometers out from Saturn.