Ice jam on the Colorado River...

shown above is evocative of the icy surface of Europa, one of the many moons of Jupiter, as shown below.

(Click each image to enlarge.) Note, in both cases, the larger blocks of ice that have separated and rotated, then frozen within a slushy matrix.

Excellent technical paper: Evidence for a subsurface ocean on Europa (.pdf file).

The most important instrument...

in human history turns 400 years old today: Galileo's telescope. This wood and leather tube containing a convex objective lens (8x mag,) in the hands of its inventor, crushed the geocentric dogma held by the Catholic Church that placed Earth at the center of the universe. So threatened by this heretical proposal Galileo Galilei was subjected to the Roman Inquisition and lived under house arrest until his death.

Previous related post.

Happy birthday to...

one of my astronomical heroes, Galileo Galilei, who was born on this date in 1564 in Pisa, Italy. Galileo is best known for his use of the telescope in observational astronomy: he studied and sketched sunspots, discovered four moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. He was also an an advocate of the Copernican system, that is, the Earth revolves around the Sun and not vice versa, in direct contradiction to church dogma at the time. Gasp! Heresy!

I still haven't forgiven the Catholic church for subjecting him to the inquisition for his heliocentric views and keeping him under house arrest until his death in 1642.