KTR-News release 030512

'Supermoon' May Outshine Meteor Shower This Weekend

The biggest full moon of the year, a so-called "supermoon," will take center stage when it rises this weekend, and may interfere with the peak of an annual meteor shower created by the leftovers from Halley's comet.

The supermoon of 2012 is the biggest full moon of the yearand will occur on Saturday (May 5) at 11:35 p.m. EDT (0335 May 6), though the moon may still appear full to skywatchers on the day before and after the actual event. At the same time, the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower will be hitting its peak, NASA scientists say.

"Its light will wash out the fainter Eta Aquarid meteors," NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center told SPACE.com in an email. Still, Cooke said there's a chance that the brightest fireballs from the meteor display may still be visible.

A supermoon occurs when the moon hits its full phase at the same time it makes closest approach to Earth for the month, a lunar milestone known as perigee. Scientists also refer to the event as a "perigee moon," according to a NASA video on the 2012 supermoon.

That's exactly what will happen on Saturday, when the moon will swing within 221,802 miles (356,955 kilometers) of Earth — its closest approach of the entire year. Because the moon's orbit is not exactly circular, there is a 3-percent variation in its closest approaches to Earth each month. The average Earth-moon distance is about 230,000 miles (384,400 km).

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 "Great City" On Mars Discovered By Italian Researcher

The Italian researcher Matteo Ianneo who discovered some five interesting structures which look like human faces on Mars, last year, has discovered something stunning again. This time, the man claims to have found geometric structures on Mars which altogether look like a city. The newly discovered “city” comes an year after his first discovery in April 2011 in which he discovered a crystal-clear human “face” (statue) which looks a lot better than the famous Cydonia Martian face.
The new findings definitely look like some sort of structures, but there is however a great chance that they would be only a satellite image combination/hybridization error.
Mr. Matteo uses Google Earth software to research the planet Mars which has been mapped with images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe by professional satellites launched by NASA in collaboration with Google. The high resolution images allow users to zoom in to altitudes to as close as 150 meters without loosing much of the image quality.
The “great city” found on Mars by Matteo Ianneo can be found and researched by anyone using the following coordinates in Google Earth/Mars: 1°52’27.22″N 81°11’54.95″W
If anyone owning a sophisticated telescope can research and confirm this discovery, please leave your opinion in our comments section to either prove or disprove it.
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Magnetic Poles Shifting 2012
 The planet's magnetic field is showing signs of wanting to make a gigantic flip, so that magnetic north heads towards Antarctica, and magnetic south goes north, reported NBC recently. In a video report (see below) expert argues that the magnetic North Pole shows 10 degrees difference.

But what would be the signals if this process has begun? Scientists say that our compasses will point the wrong way, and migrating birds, fish and turtles are going to be very confused. About every half a million years or so, the Earth's magnetic field reverse its magnetic poles.
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