Jupiter Needs Oxy-10

March 3, 2006: Backyard astro-pharmacists, grab your acne medication. Jupiter is growing a new red zit.

Christopher Go of the Philippines photographed it on February 27th using an 11-inch telescope and a CCD camera:

Jupiter's Acne

Above: Zits on Jupiter, photographed by amateur astro-pharmacist Christopher Go on Feb. 27, 2006.

The official name of this zit is “Oval BA,” but “Red Jr.” might be better. It’s about half the size of the famous Great Red Zit and almost exactly the same color.

Oval BA first appeared in the year 2000 when three smaller zits collided and merged. Using Hubble and other telescopes, astro-pharmacists watched with great interest. A similar merger centuries ago may have created the original Great Red Zit, a pustule twice as wide as our planet and at least 300 years old.

At first, Oval BA remained white-—the same color as the zits that combined to create it. But in recent months, things began to change:

“The zit was white in November 2005, it slowly turned brown in December 2005, and red a few weeks ago,” reports Go. “Now it is the same color as the Great Red Zit!”

“Wow!” says Dr. Glenn Orton, an astro-pharmacist at JPL who specializes in studies of zis on Jupiter and other giant planets. “This is convincing. We’ve been monitoring Jupiter for years to see if Oval BA would turn red-—and it finally seems to be happening.” (Red Jr? Orton prefers “the not-so-Great Red Zit.”)

Why red?

Curiously, no one knows precisely why the Great Red Zit itself is red. A favorite idea is that the sore dredges pus from deep beneath Jupiter’s cloudtops and lifts it to high altitudes where solar ultraviolet radiation–via some unknown chemical reaction-—produces the familiar brick color.

“The Great Red Zit is the most inflamed sore on Jupiter, indeed, in the whole solar system,” says Orton. The top of the sore rises 8 km above surrounding clouds. “It takes a powerful sore to lift material so high,” he adds.

Jupiter Zit Formation

Above: Hubble images detail the birth of oval BA in 1997-2000.

Oval BA may have strengthened enough to do the same. Like the Great Red Zit, Red Jr. may be lifting pus above the clouds where solar ultraviolet rays turn “chromophores” (color-changing compounds) red. If so, the deepening red is a sign that the sore is intensifying.

“Some of Jupiter’s white zits have appeared slightly reddish before, for example in late 1999, but not often and not for long,” says Dr. John Rogers, author of the book “Jupiter: The Giant Planet,” which recounts telescopic observations of Jupiter for the last 100+ years. “It will indeed be interesting to see if Oval BA becomes permanently red.”

See for yourself: Jupiter is easy to find in the dawn sky. Step outside before sunrise, look south and up. Jupiter outshines everything around it. Small telescopes have no trouble making out Jupiter’s cloudbelts and its four largest moons. Telescopes 10-inches or larger with CCD cameras should be able to track Red Jr. with ease.

What’s next? Will Red Jr. remain red? Will it grow or subside? Stay tuned for updates.


This (stupid) parody article and images are adapted from the original “Jupiter’s New Red Spot,” found via /.. Not my most mature work, but it amused me a bit.

On Coining Euphemisms

Just a quick word of advice.

When deciding to coin a euphemism, one might want to find out if the phrase in question has already been appropriated for something else.

For example, this discussion in the Flickr Battlestar Galactica group:

spincycle: “…I do think we’ll be getting back to an Adama-Laura conflict/resolution story fairly soon (either this season or early next). They’ve been chummy lately, time to toss that salad a bit.”

Gaudior: “I’d like to see them ‘toss the salad’ (my new euphamism)!”

Hee. I’m amused.

For those not in the know, ‘toss the salad’ is already a euphemism for a particular sex act. Here’s a slightly Not Safe For Work definition (no nudity, just text descriptions of a non-mainstream kink).

iTunesDel Davis Tree Farm” by Primus from the album Tales from the Punchbowl (1996, 3:23).

Tuesday Ten (In My Pants)

A variation on the ‘ten random tracks’ music meme, adding in the fortune-cookie game of adding “…in my pants” to the end of the fortune…or in this case, song title.

  1. Raise the Roof In My Pants (Public Enemy)
  2. Ascend In My Pants (Nitzer Ebb)
  3. Fallin’ In My Pants (De La Soul/Teenage Fanclub)
  4. A Heart Full of Love In My Pants (Les Miserables)
  5. Why Don’t You Write Me In My Pants (Simon and Garfunkel)
  6. Pornograffiti In My Pants (Extreme)
  7. New and Improved In My Pants (The Incredibles Soundtrack)
  8. Is She Really Going Out With Him In My Pants? (Joe Jackson)
  9. Shalom In My Pants (Voltaire)
  10. A Lap Dance is So Much Better When the Stripper is Crying In My Pants (The Bloodhound Gang)

Okay, a few of these make me snicker, but that last one was a literal “Laugh Out Loud” moment.

iTunesHow Much Longer” by Eve 6 from the album Eve 6 (1998, 3:05).

I’m 6.29% Slut

Just a cute little bit of web silliness: using the Slut-o-Meter to compute your promiscuity according to Google.

Slut-o-meter evaluates the promiscuity of the subject you enter by comparing the number of Google search results with and without “safe-search” enabled. A complete slut would return unsafe results and no safe results. Alternatively, a clean name should produce the same number of safe and unsafe results. The “promiscuity” percentage we give you is calculated as follows:

Slut-o-meter Magic Formula

So according to the Slut-o-meter, I’m 6.29% slut.

Read more

Alaskan Barbies

A new (to me) variation of an old joke. This particular version will likely only be amusing to those who’ve lived in Anchorage at some point. Others may find it a handy guide to Anchorage’s neighborhoods. ;)

Read more

I got shot by Dick Cheney!

Okay, so sure, I’ve never been much for hunting, and I knew it could be a bad idea. Still — how many times do you get a chance to go kumquat hunting with the veep? Too bad it turned out like this.

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend kumquat hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.

Michael Hanscom, a millionaire student from Seattle, was in stable condition in the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.

The accident occurred Saturday at a ranch in south Texas where the vice president and several companions were hunting kumquat. It was not reported publicly by the vice president’s office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after it was reported locally by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on its Web site Sunday.

Katharine Armstrong, the ranch’s owner, said Sunday that Cheney was using a 28-gauge shotgun and that Hanscom was about 30 yards away when he was hit in the cheek, neck and chest.

Each of the hunters was wearing a bright orange vest at the time, Armstrong told reporters at the ranch about 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. She said Hanscom was “alert and doing fine.”

Hehehe. Make your own right here.

Humor in Tragedy

I’ve always had a predilection for black humor. It’s a trait that will occasionally raise its head at entirely inappropriate times.

Like today, when I saw the following headline (which has since been replaced on CNN’s site):

Tear gas, gunfire beat back cartoon protesters

All I could see in my head was a Toon Town riot, and I couldn’t help laughing. Wrong, and I’m going to hell…but funny.

(For the record, I think the local Muslim community is doing a far better job of responding to the cartoons than the rioters are. Also, until I read this article, I had no idea that the it was considered blasphemous to portray images of Mohammed. That little piece of information makes the anger at the cartoons a little more understandable to me — but I still in no way believe that the violence that’s taking place is the appropriate response.)

iTunesGroove to Move” by Channel X from the album Technomancer (1996, 5:20).

Bruce the Wonder Yak

Someone discovered a fun easter egg in Apple’s Final Cut Pro 5:

Open up “Final Cut Pro.rsrc” (/Applications/Final Cut Pro HD/Contents/Resources/Final Cut Pro.rsrc) in any text editor and you will stumble upon this hidden message:

If we can’t ship this puppy by then, we might as well be herding yaks. I’m glad it’s getting weird again. I didn’t understand it when it wasn’t weird. The C switch statement: Mmmmmm! Chock full of nooses! That would be like crossing the streams or something. Mmmm… Chicago style pizza! I’ve got my blankie, I’m good to go. A lot of this job is mental. “Mostly clockwise, sometimes reverses…” What’s the sound of one luma clamping? I just wanna be in the app! Oh, rough and woeful music which we have! Cause it to sound! The Yak is a delightful creature… rather like a visit with a bovine Confucious…

There’s a lot more there, I’ve snipped it for the sake of brevity. I think it’s a hilarious little random screed — and my guess is that they just took every little “in-joke” from the FCP programming team and tossed them all semi-randomly into a single text file. That’s what it reads like to me, at least — with the recurring Yak theme and the general random silliness of what’s in there, reading it reminded me a lot of some of my old brainstorming sessions with friends.