The White House posted the following infographic on its website explaining how America accumulated its national debt over the past decade, shifting fiscal forecasts from projected surpluses to elephantine deficits.
via i.imgur.com
Eclectic Perambulations in the Noosphere
Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA
"Gemini Observatory image of Kronberger 61 showing the ionized shell of expelled gas resembling a soccer ball. The light of the nebula here is primarily due to emission from twice-ionized oxygen, and its central star can be seen as the slightly bluer star very close to the center of the nebula."
"Enceladus expels around 250 kg of water vapor every second, through a collection of jets from the south polar region known as the Tiger Stripes because of their distinctive surface markings. Much of the ice ends up in orbit around Saturn, creating the hazy E ring in which Enceladus resides.
But a small amount reaches Saturn – about 3% to 5% of Enceladus’s ejected water ends up on the home planet of Saturn."
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By July in a typical year, the snow that covers the slopes of the Rocky Mountains has given way to grasses and wildflowers, leaving only the peaks capped in white. But 2011 has not been a typical year. As this image of the Uinta Mountains in northeast Utah shows, winter’s snow is lingering into summer. On June 26, the snowpack on the southern face of the range was 849 percent above average. The northern face had 892 percent more snow than average.
The image was taken by the Landsat 5 satellite on July 15, 2011.
