The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic Cloud

It may look like a grazing seahorse, but the dark object toward the image right is actually a pillar of smoky dust about 20 light years long. The curiously-shaped dust structure occurs in our neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud, in a star forming region very near the expansive Tarantula Nebula. The energetic nebula is creating a star cluster, NGC 2074, whose center is visible just off the top of the image in the direction of the neck of the seahorse. The representative color image was taken in 2008 by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in honor of Hubble’s 100,000th trip around the Earth. As young stars in the cluster form, their light and winds will slowly erode the dust pillars away over the next million years. via NASA http://ift.tt/1w9gQi8

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LGBT Baby Boomers Face Tough Retirement Hurdles by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

For Kathy Murphy, the difference between being gay or straight is $583 a month.

Published: November 30, 2014 at 07:05AM

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Coast Guard Rescues 5 After Boat Sinks Off Oregon by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. Coast Guard crews rescued five people whose fishing boat sank Saturday in the chilly Pacific waters off the Oregon coast.

Published: November 29, 2014 at 08:38PM

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3D 67P

Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to a comet! The Rosetta mission lander Philae’s ROLIS camera snapped the two frames used to create this stereo anaglyph for 3D viewing during its November 12 descent to the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The comet’s curious double lobed nucleus is seen nearly end on from a distance of about 3 kilometers, about 1 hour before Philae arrived at the surface. Philae’s initial landing site is near the center of the front facing lobe. Part of a landing gear foot cuts across the upper right corner, in the close foreground of the 3D-view. Philae bounced twice in the comet’s weak gravity after its first contact with the surface. Using high resolution camera images from the Rosetta orbiter along with data from the lander’s instruments, controllers have followed Philae’s impromptu journey over the comet’s surface and have identified a likely area for its final resting place. via NASA http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap141129.html

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Greenland: Home to Vast Resources, 56,000 People but No Motorbikes by REUTERS

By REUTERS

Greenland’s ruling Siumut Party has narrowly won a snap election in the island nation that is hoping for independence from Denmark, backed by wealth from its natural resources.

Published: November 29, 2014 at 05:23AM

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Report: Up to 13,000 Victims in UK Modern Slavery by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A government study into the scale of modern slavery in Britain suggests that up to 13,000 people in the country are victims — four times the previous estimate.

Published: November 29, 2014 at 01:44AM

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Portrait of NGC 281

Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and you might miss the stars of open cluster IC 1590. But, formed within the nebula, that cluster’s young, massive stars ultimately power the pervasive nebular glow. The eye-catching shapes looming in this portrait of NGC 281 are sculpted columns and dense dust globules seen in silhouette, eroded by intense, energetic winds and radiation from the hot cluster stars. If they survive long enough, the dusty structures could also be sites of future star formation. Playfully called the Pacman Nebula because of its overall shape, NGC 281 is about 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp composite image was made through narrow-band filters, combining emission from the nebula’s hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms in green, red, and blue hues. It spans over 80 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 281. via NASA http://ift.tt/1zBXmQP

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Driving the Seam of Hispaniola by JULIA ALVAREZ

By JULIA ALVAREZ

A road trip down the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti reveals international strains and cultural highlights.

Published: November 29, 2014 at 07:00PM

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High Winds Scale Back Search for Missing Anglers by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Strong winds in northern Montana led Glacier County officials to scale back the search for a Canadian man and a Japanese woman who went missing after a weekend fishing trip.

Published: November 28, 2014 at 07:28AM

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At Auctions, Russian Oligarchs Start to Hedge Their Bets by SCOTT REYBURN

By SCOTT REYBURN

At recent sales in London, auction houses struggled to sell top Russian works of art. Some dealers said that the sluggish sales were a reflection of what’s going on in Russia.

Published: December 1, 2014 at 08:00AM

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Mining, Independence at Stake as Greenland Goes to the Polls by REUTERS

By REUTERS

Greenlanders go to the polls on Friday with hopes for a mineral-rich independence from Denmark foundering on the reality of a tiny, shrinking economy.

Published: November 27, 2014 at 11:50PM

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Galileo s Europa Remastered

Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon’s icy surface likely hides a deep, global ocean. Galileo’s Europa image data has been newly remastered here, using improved new calibrations to produce a color image approximating what the human eye might see. Europa’s long curving fractures hint at the subsurface liquid water. The tidal flexing the large moon experiences in its elliptical orbit around Jupiter supplies the energy to keep the ocean liquid. But more tantalizing is the possibility that even in the absence of sunlight that process could also supply the energy to support life, making Europa one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth. What kind of life could thrive in a deep, dark, subsurface ocean? Consider planet Earth’s own extreme shrimp. via NASA http://ift.tt/1vnilHS

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Kindle Versus Ipad: Which Tablet Is Best for Kids? by WARREN BUCKLEITNER

By WARREN BUCKLEITNER

When choosing a child’s tablet, remember that you are making a down payment toward a content library that will last for years. Making a hasty decision based on price may backfire.

Published: November 27, 2014 at 03:06PM

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Ivory Coast Seizes Two Chinese Trawlers in Fishing Dispute by REUTERS

By REUTERS

Ivory Coast has seized two Chinese trawlers accused of fishing illegally offshore the West African country, a senior Ivorian navy source said on Thursday.

Published: November 27, 2014 at 12:37PM

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Portugal Police Make Big Hashish Seizure Off Ship by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Portuguese police say they seized around 20 metric tons of hashish from a fishing vessel at sea, despite the crew’s efforts to sink the ship by exploding a drum of gas as authorities approached.

Published: November 27, 2014 at 02:54AM

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Io and Callisto Mutual Event

A 24 minute sequence from top to bottom, this intriguing series of telescopic frames tracks the occultation of Io by Callisto, two of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, from San Pietro Polesine, Italy, planet Earth. A challenging observational project using a small telescope, the two contrasting Jovian worlds are both slightly larger than Earth’s Moon. In fact, bright, volcanic Io and dark, cratered Callisto are about 3,640 and 4,820 kilometers in diameter respectively. With Earth itself now crossing near the orbital plane of Jupiter’s moons, astronomers are enjoying a season of Galilean moon mutual events ranging from eclipses to occultations. The series of orbital plane crossings produce a mutual event season every 5 to 6 years. via NASA http://ift.tt/1CdOXZv

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Exclusive: Poor and Besieged, Myanmar’s Rakhine Join Rohingya Exodus by REUTERS

By REUTERS

For years, tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslim boat people have fled this remote corner of western Myanmar for nearby countries. But another huge exodus has grabbed far fewer headlines.

Published: November 26, 2014 at 11:04AM

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