Celestial Events
June 10th, 2008 by Barry Eaton
Planck telescope reveals ancient cosmic light
This is the extraordinary place where we all live - the Universe.
The picture is the first full-sky image from Europe’s Planck telescope which was sent into space last year to survey the “oldest light” in the cosmos.
It took the 700m-euro observatory just over six months to assemble the map.
It shows what is visible beyond the Earth to instruments that are sensitive to light at very long wavelengths - much longer than what we can sense with our eyes.
Researchers say it is a remarkable dataset that will help them understand better how the Universe came to look the way it does now.
“It’s a spectacular picture; it’s a thing of beauty,” Dr Jan Tauber, the European Space Agency’s (Esa) Planck project scientist, told BBC News.
Dominating the foreground are large segments of our Milky Way Galaxy.
The bright horizontal line running the full length of the image is the galaxy’s main disc - the plane in which the Sun and the Earth also reside.
In the wayThis is where most stars in the Milky Way form today; but because this picture records only light at long wavelengths (microwaves to the very far infrared), what we actually see are not stars at all.
THE PLANCK SPACE TELESCOPE
- Planck is surveying the famous Cosmic Microwave Background
- This ancient light’s origins date to 380,000 years after the Big Bang
- It informs scientists about the age, contents and shape of the cosmos
- Planck’s measurements will be finer than any previous satellite
- The observatory makes its map by rotating and scanning the sky
- Planck’s mission goal is to scan the sky at least four times
Rather, what we see is the stuff that goes into making stars - lots of dust and gas.
Of particular note are the huge streamers of cold dust that reach thousands of light-years above and below the galactic plane.
“What you see is the structure of our galaxy in gas and dust, which tells us an awful lot about what is going on in the neighbourhood of the Sun; and it tells us a lot about the way galaxies form when we compare this to other galaxies,” observed Professor Andrew Jaffe, a Planck team member from Imperial College London, UK.
But as beautiful as the Milky Way appears, its emission must be removed if scientists are to get an even better view of its mottled backdrop, coloured here in magenta and yellow.
This is the famous cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and a key target of the Planck mission.
The CMB is the “first light”. It is the light that was finally allowed to move out across space once a post-Big-Bang Universe had cooled sufficiently to permit the formation of hydrogen atoms.
Before that time, scientists say, the cosmos would have been so hot that matter and radiation would have been “coupled” - the Universe would have been opaque.
Super-cold detectorsResearchers can detect temperature variations in this ancient heat energy that give them insights into the early structure of the Universe and the blueprint for everything that came afterwards.
Some of Planck’s detectors are probably the coldest surfaces in space
A major quest for Planck is to find firm evidence of “inflation”, the faster-than-light expansion that cosmologists believe the Universe experienced in its first, fleeting moments.
Theory predicts this event ought to be “imprinted” in the CMB and its detail should be retrievable with sufficiently sensitive instruments.
Planck is designed to have that capability. Some of its detectors operate at a staggering minus 273.05C - just a tenth of a degree above what scientists term “absolute zero”.
Planck is already in the process of assembling a second version of the map. It has funding to acquire at least four versions.
“We know that eventually as the data get better and better, what you end up getting to are the limitations of what you know about the instrument,” explained Professor Jaffe.
“And so, by running Planck for longer we can learn a lot more about the instrument itself and thereby remove a lot of the contaminating effects that are just because of the way it produces its noise.”
Patient analysisThe project team will need a while to analyse all the data and assess its significance. A formal release of fully prepared CMB images and scientific papers is not expected before the end of 2012.
However, such has been the anticipation for Planck data that one or two groups have already tried to make unauthorised interpretations simply from the images released to the media like the one on this page.
But Dr Tauber says this activity is pointless.
“The CMB is certainly visible but the image itself is colour-enhanced so you couldn’t do any science with that,” he explained.
The HogueProphecy Bulletin
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Uranus in Aries: Change or Chaos?
Uranus.
Friends,
Cosmic influences take their leisurely, eternal time in a universe that is 13.5 billion years old after God or an indescribable “godliness” Big Banged a dark and unfathomable beauty called “existence” who then instantaneously gave birth to all and everything. Astronomers since then try to unlock the mystery of cosmic forces and phenomena with the prose of fact and objective science. Astrologers play their part as cosmic poets trying to grasp the subjective mythos in a language using planets and stars as subject and their aspects transiting constellations as predicate.
Life is also poetry. Astronomers measure cosmic facts, astrologers “meter” out an understanding of cosmic influence on us. Even a cop will tell you that when a full moon is afoot people act stranger than normal. Mystics recount that more people, such as Buddha, become enlightened on a full moon night than at any other time. What is released or induced by other more distant heavenly bodies is far subtler, so claim the astrologers.
Since 2008, we have experienced a number of instances where a collective desire for change has hit an often-intractable wall of status quo. An African American for the first time became president of the United States waxing messianic about change having come. Yet Barack Obama’s presidency tested in reality beyond seductive fantasy has often collided will immovable fact in the first year and four months of his presidency. Many of his ambitious pledges of change have not happened and those that have, such as Health Care Reform passed successfully through the legislative process mutilated to no one’s complete satisfaction. Once in office, promised immigration reform was postponed for a year. Banking reform too. Much talk of change but little “do” has happened in the face of a lot of “do nots” assembled in opposition. Now it seems the forces of change are swinging in all directions without a coherent course to take. The pitchfork primaries wildly throw out good incumbents with the bad simply because they are incumbents. A third party movement I have long forecast coming is currently a grab bag chaos wherein everybody bellows and protests their own agenda. The Tea Party movement is the first whining baby spanked at birth. Today an incoherent political catharsis may later gain focus and maturity. PerhapsŠ
Astronomers will simply take note of several oppositions of the planet Saturn with Uranus as mere occurrences.
The astrologer will use these oppositions to explain all the above gridlock and confounded hopes of change as being directly influenced by Saturn (the status quo and ruler of reality checks) in a tug of war with Uranus (ruler of the new Aquarian age and ruler of revolutionary change and chaos). In short, the past is in gridlock with the future.
The first two times these planets pulled in opposition happened the night Barack Obama won his election in November 2008 and again on Inauguration Day when he officially became the president of the United States. The bottom line in layman’s terms is this: Obama’s first term in office has and will continue to be defined by this grappling cosmic scrum of a Saturn-Uranus opposition. Change promised will be hard to earn because the forces of “past think” will try sabotage.
Back in 2007 when I posted Obama Nation a year before Obama even ran for office, I predicted though his destiny to become a president was certain if he should push impatiently to become one in 2008 he would arrive too soon to that destiny without prerequisite maturity and experience.
Oh what an avalanche of angry emails did that prophecy spawn from Obama supporters throughout 2008. Yet, since then I have taken note 16 months into Obama’s presidency that the silence from those quarters is now deafening. I hold the hope that your champion of messianic change will take the rest of his Saturn-Uranus deadlocked presidential term to mature and perhaps live up to his ambitions in a second term.
Yes, Obama will have a second term in office. (OMG does this mean Kev 07 wins another election?) Now all of you on the right can send your angry letters my way and I will patiently wait for the deafening silence from that quarter coming after the November elections of 2012.
One of the reasons why Obama will survive the end of his political honeymoon with the American people into a second term starts in a few days from the time of this writing. Uranus passes into the sign of Aries on 27-28 May 2010, depending on which side of longitudinal GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) you live on. The ruler of “Change” meets the “Sign” of “new beginnings and new enterprise.” Following this the Saturn-Uranus opposition will return only this time it will move out of the mutable (read politically wishy-washy and unfocused) signs of Virgo and politically foggy-fishy Pisces into Cardinal (leadership) signs. First with Uranus in Aries, then a little later Saturn enters Libra (the balancer) in June.
I deny strenuously that I am a foggy-fishy and Princess Diane is not wishy-washy!
Obama should see some slight improvement in passing his change agenda from now deep into July. Then the exact opposition clicks in again with Saturn and Uranus both in 0 degrees of Libra and Aries respectively. Uranus at that time will be moving backwards in retrograde. That means change will once again be effectively stalled. Retrogrades also represent times when we need to review our systemic faults. Since Uranus is in retrograde that means Obama and all those embarked on changing the world for better - whether that change is engaged individually as political, social or spiritually inward change - must “go back to the drawing board” as it were. Each of us must become aware of fundamental structural flaws in our change agenda, expose these hidden illusions so we can transcend their impairment of soul-given genius and make our dream of a better world a success.
Saturn.
Saturn in Libra during the upcoming months will exert its other practical influences: not only status quo intransigence but also Saturn’s other astrological dominion: the realm of reality checks. Real revolution will not be found in the world of human beings by lunging reactively to Uranian extremes. Saturn will stubbornly keep reminding us: React-illusion is not real Revolution. Change for its own sake does not always equate to good.
Case in point, the last time Uranus transited Aries (1928-1934) was also a time of economic, social upheaval and revolutionary change. The Great Depression was a monster child of that transit as was US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s positive and peaceful Jeffersonian revolution of the New Deal in America, which included successful bank reform and social security for all Americans. Change equating to good. However, 1928 through 1934 also brought the world revolutionary change in the Soviet Union, which miraculously caught up with other industrial giants in a few short years at a dreadful cost in lives enslaved and lost. The forced collective farm system generated starvation that carried off 3 to 7 million Ukrainians in 1932-33. Privatization was also pretty much liquidated in other sectors. Those who stood against Communist changes were shot or sent to concentration camps in Siberia or pressed into chain gangs to build the vast canal system to the White Sea or the huge Dnieper River hydroelectric dams.
The last Uranus in Aries transit had New Deals and people ‘dealt with’ for the sake of change, such as millions dying of starvation from Soviet collectivization.
Change in America’s Uranus-in-Aries inspired New Deal put the nation back to work on public projects whereas it put the lash of change against the emaciated backs of millions of slave laborers in the Soviet Union. Change arrived with great force and it was breathtaking! An agrarian, illiterate, backward society became in the few short years of the Uranus-Aries transit a literate, modern industrial giant often at the cost of snuffing the breath out of millions.
The last Uranus-in-Aries transit brought incredible change to Germany too. In those days many around the world initially believed it was good change. It ended economic chaos. It silenced social upheaval and riots in the streets between extreme left and right wing gangs. It brought back employment, ended famines and restored law, order and peace. The people supported its leader who did more than promise change. He gave it to them. They had food; restored national pride and jobs.
This successful German revolution went mainstream politically just a few months after Uranus began its several-year transit through Aries in January 1928. From May 1928 through 1933, the movement kept winning more seats in national elections, swelling their numbers in the German Reichstag (parliament) becoming the largest minority. This gave their leader the power to form a coalition government placing himself as head of state on 30 January 1933. In the final days of Uranus transiting Aries, the Chancellor of Germany passed the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act. He abolished opposition parties and became Fuehrer of Germany.
The Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler with the help of Uranus in Aries brought to the German people “change” they could believe in.
Be mindful of this. What is good about change must be anchored in consciousness and love. Revolutionary times like the one we are entering do bring positive objective changes as much as they do mass mob movements. Uranus rules change. It also rules chaos. Aries is the ruler of new beginnings, but Aries also rules mad, hot tempered and ill-thought out rushes into war, hysteria and mass insanity.
Uranus will only dip into Aries briefly through the summer months of 2010. Then it will return to Aries in March 2011. It will finally leave Aries eight years later in March of 2019. We will finish this summer with a taste of what will astrologically define the decade of the 2010s: a decade of upheaval, the writing of many systemic problems and fossilized ways of fixing them on the wall for changes good and evil.
React-illusions woven into the fabric of revolution are coming in all levels of life. Each individual must learn a way of awareness that distinguishes between the two. For that, I offer meditation techniques that have helped me see the difference far better and live accordingly in celebration of this gathering, inner light.
Let meditation help you rediscover how to be wise to the ways the winds of change may blow in the coming decade. Let us learn from the successes and mistakes to come this summer how to make our Aries-Uranus transit a “new Deal” for the future, rather than an enabling act for chaos, collectivization and systemic breakdowns of the political-economic, social, spiritual and ecological systems.
Read more about how Uranus in Aries could affect your life in the coming decade by checking out: Predictions for 2010. Getting a direct download of this book will help Hogueprophecy.com stay online in times coming such as these, when its message and help in understanding when prophecy and current events converge could not be more needed.
John Hogue
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