Day: July 28, 2016

A Little Humor for Your Day – “A Memo From One of Our Local Hospitals To Their Staff, oh brother!”

Memo To Hospital Staff

It has come to our attention from several emergency rooms that many EMS narratives have taken a decidedly creative direction lately. Effective immediately, all members are to refrain from using slang and abbreviations to describe patients, such as the following:

  • Cardiac patients should not be referred to with MUH (messed up heart), PBS (pretty bad shape), PCL (pre-code looking) or HIBGIA (had it before, got it again).
  • Stroke patients are not “Charlie Carrots,” nor are rescuers to use CCFCCP (Coo Coo for Cocoa Puffs) to describe their mental state.
  • Trauma patients are not CATS (cut all to shit), FDGB (fall down, go boom), TBC (total body crunch) or “hamburger helper.” Similarly, descriptions of a car crash do not have to include phrases like “negative vehicle to vehicle interface” or “terminal deceleration syndrome.”
  • HAZMAT teams are highly trained professionals, not “glow worms.”
  • Persons with altered mental states as a result of drug use are not considered “pharmaceutically gifted.”
  • Gunshot wounds to the head are not “trans-occipital implants.”
  • The homeless are not “urban outdoorsmen”, nor is endotracheal intubation referred to as a “PVC Challenge”.
  • And finally, do not refer to recently deceased persons as being “paws up,” ART (assuming room temperature), CC (Cancel Christmas), CTD (circling the drain), NLPR (no long playing records), or TSTL (Too Stupid To Live).

 

Courtesy of Turok’s Cabana

Astronomy Picture of the Day – Herschel’s Eagle Nebula

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2016 July 28

Herschel’s Eagle Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project
Acknowledgment: G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF

 

Explanation: A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory’s panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel’s far infrared detectors record the emission from the region’s cold dust directly. The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars’ radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).

Earth Sky News for Thursday, July 28th: Moon and Aldebaran before dawn

Moon and Aldebaran before dawn July 29

By

Before dawn tomorrow – July 29, 2016 – look east to see the lunar crescent partnering up with Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus the Bull. Our sky chart at top shows the view as seen from mid-northern North American latitudes, where the moon and Aldebaran will be a hair’s-breadth apart on the sky’s dome.

Elsewhere around the world – Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand – the moon and Aldebaran will be farther apart from one another during the predawn hours on July 29. The moon’s illuminated side will be pointing in the direction of Aldebaran, and in the moon’s direction of travel relative to the backdrop stars of the zodiac.

If you live in Texas, Mexico or Central America, you can actually watch the moon occult – cover over – Aldebaran in the predawn hours on July 29, 2016. Aldebaran disappears behind the moon’s illuminated side and reappears on the moon’s dark side.

For your convenience, we give the local times of the lunar occulation of Aldebaran for various cities.

Lunar occultation of Aldebaran on July 29, 2019:

Austin, Texas
Occultation begins (Aldebaran disappears): 4:40 a.m. local time
Occultation ends (Aldebaran reappears): 5:20 a.m. local time

Mexico City, Mexico
Occultation begins (Aldebaran disappears): 4:18 a.m. local time
Occultation ends (Aldebaran reappears): 5:16 a.m. local time

Managua, Nicaragua
Occultation begins (Aldebaran disappears): 3:16 a.m. local time
Occultation ends (Aldebaran reappears): 4:17 a.m. local time

More information on the lunar occulation of Aldebaran on July 29, 2016

We refer you to the worldwide map below via the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA). Given clear skies, everyplace within the solid white lines can see the occultation of Aldebaran during the predawn hours on July 29, 2016. The short blue lines to the right of the solid white lines indicate the occultation happening at dawn. The area in between the dotted red lines represents a daytime occultation.

Click here to find out the occultation times for numerous localities around the world. Remember that you must translate Universal Time to your local time.

How do I translate Universal Time to my time?

Or look at the chart below for the local times of the occultation on the morning of Friday, July 29, 2016.

Bottom line: For you early birds, enjoy the close pairing of the waning crescent moon and the star Aldebaran in the predawn sky on July 29, 2016. From Texas, Mexico or Central America, the moon will occult, or cover, Aldebaran.

 

BRUCE MCCLURE

Bruce McClure has served as lead writer for EarthSky’s popular Tonight pages since 2004. He’s a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also writes and hosts public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York.

Article originally published on EarthSky