One more on the lunar eclipse from feb 20th

A time lapse of the total lunar eclipse on February 20th, 2008. Recorded with still images. A nice one :)

The floating garbage can

A few days ago heavy rain and flooding as i posted earlier. Gives a good idea about how much water came down.

Found this movie of a floating garbage can from the Palermo Soho neighborhood, Buenos Aires. This is from the area Uriarte and Loyola streets.

Indiana Jones

Here is a trailer from the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. How many years has it been since the last movie? Trailer looks cool though.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Qué historia!

Yesterdays film Otoko-tachi no Yamato

Since I'm a lover of military stuff (hence my other Blog) and also WW II related topics i saw a Japanese movie yesterday about the Japanese WW II battleship Yamato. Next to airplanes my favorite is definately battleships. A pity they became obsolete because of the aircraft carriers. Great names like the Missouri, Yamato, HMS Hood and Bismarck. So for those who like battleships this is definately a movie you want to see. And fortunately it had English subtitles!

The title of the movie is: Otoko-tachi no Yamato
(website)

It's a movie of 2005 (60 years after the Yamato was sunk near Okinawa) The movie featured the wartime events of the Yamato and more specific a few sailors. It starts when a woman wants to find a boat to go to the spot where the Yamato sunk. It is about the day of the 60 year anniversary. The old man who takes her was a sailor on the Yamato and with flashbacks this story continues. The woman is the daughter of a sailor who the old man knew and had just passed away. The old man was not aware of the survival of this man. So you get flashbacks of the old man in relation to this father of this woman and some other stories. Eventually they reach the coordinates and the woman brings out the ashes of her father to spread them in the water. This was quite a loaded scene especially for the old man as well. As he never understood why he survived.

It gives a good impression how wartime japan must have been. Also the loss of family members and fellow sailors is good depicted. Quite an emotional movie in that regard. Also some action of course. The Leyte Gulf episode and the final battle at Okinawa.

The music is absolutely great. Some of the music is in the trailer below. They created big parts of the battleship and for a time people could visit the set which was very much done so. Surely i would have wanted to see it.

A fact about Yamato: Out of the 2,778 crew only 280 survived and were rescued.

Hubble Catches Saturn’s Orbital Dance in New Movies

W00t!

Astronomers have created three stunning movies of Saturn and its rings, using special techniques to extend still images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope into moving pictures that show the ringed planet in novel splendor.

Each movie highlights a different moment in the planet's 30-year orbit around the Sun.

• VIDEO: Hubble Space Telescope’s Saturnian Movies

Two of the movies (15 seconds long and 30 seconds long) show the motion of several of Saturn's moons when the planet's rings were tilted nearly edge-on towards the Earth and Sun. Such alignments happen about once every 15 years. The third movie, at 24-seconds long, shows a clear view of Saturn's southern hemisphere when the planet's rings were most tilted toward Earth.

Ray Villard of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which oversees the Hubble space telescope's research mission, said the movies show Saturn at very unique orientations relative to Earth.

"When Saturn's ring plane was edge-on to earth, the ring becomes a wafer-thin slice and that's a beautiful opportunity to see the moons very clearly," he said.

Another set of images used for the videos and from a similar orientation also impressed folks at STScI immediately, Villard said. "What's spectacular about that, which we noticed when the pictures first were taken, is that you can actually see the shadow from the moon skirting across the ring plane," he told Space.com. "That would only happen at a unique time, just like a setting sun."

Software was used to morph a dozen images, during each of these orbital slices of time, into the hundreds of images needed for the movies.

The images were taken by the Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in 1995 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2003.

Movie details

The shortest edge-on ring movie shows the moons Titan and Tethys orbiting Saturn. The moons follow the rings' thin line in their orbit around Saturn. Titan's shadow is the first to appear, moving across Saturn's disk. Titan follows, with Tethys appearing on the left from behind the planet. The moons seem to move much faster than they actually do because several hours of viewing time (images were taken over a 10.5-hour span) were compressed to make the movie, which also shows bands of clouds that make up Saturn's atmosphere.

The longer edge-on ring movie shows the icy moons Mimas, Enceladus, Dione and Tethys rounding Saturn. Enceladus appears first with Mimas right behind. Both moons cast small shadows on the planet, and Enceladus casts a shadow on the rings. Mimas' orbit is too inclined to hit the rings. Dione then appears with a long shadow that tracks across the ring system. Tethys appears only briefly as it moves behind the planet on the right. The images for this movie were taken over a 9.5-hour span.

The maximum ring-tilt movie first shows Saturn spinning. Although the rings rotate with the planet, they appear to be stationary because the ring material is spread out so evenly. Saturn rotates on its axis every 10 hours, more than twice as fast as Earth.

Next, the movie offers a close-up of Saturn's southern hemisphere. Astronomers enhanced the contrast in this sequence to make Saturn's banded cloud structure more obvious. The images for this movie were taken over a 24-hour span.

NASA's Voyager and Cassini missions also have generated movies of Saturn. Cassini has been at Saturn since July 2004, studying the planet, its moons and its ring system.

"Cassini has shown us those moons are so diverse that it's like finding a little solar system unto itself," Villard said.

• VIDEO: Hubble Space Telescope’s Saturnian Movies
• VIDEO: The Cassini Probe Crosses Saturn’s Rings
• VIDEO: Enceladus – Saturn’s Old Faithful
• The Best Hubble Space Telescope Images
• Complete Coverage of the Hubble Space Telescope
• Hubble Gets Superb View of Saturn and Rings
• IMAGES: New Snapshots of Saturn
• IMAGES: Imagining Saturn and Titan
• All About Saturn

Source

Star Trek XI Unofficial Teaser Trailer

Found this trailer of the upcoming Star Trek XI movie (due X-Mas 2008). Not official but certainly nicely made.

Christmas Day 2008 Release for "Star Trek XI"

As a Star Trek fan obviously this announcement is a great thing! Article from Startrek.com:

HOLLYWOOD, CA, February 26, 2007 — "Star Trek," one of the most popular and successful franchises in the history of movies and television, returns to the big screen under the creative vision of J.J. Abrams, the force behind "Lost," "Alias" and "Mission Impossible III" for Paramount Pictures.

The team behind the film will include Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci ("Mission Impossible III") who wrote the screenplay and will executive produce with Bryan Burk. JJ Abrams and "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelof will produce. The film will begin shooting this fall for a Christmas Day 2008 release.

One of the most popular film and television franchises of all time, "Star Trek" has encompassed 726 total episodes for television in six different series, beginning with the original 1966-1969 series created by Gene Roddenberry. The 10 "Star Trek" films have grossed in excess of $1 billion at the worldwide box office. The original characters have been named among the 50 greatest TV characters of all time and the Enterprise has lent its name to two proposed spacecraft.

"If there's something I'm dying to see, it's the brilliance and optimism of Roddenberry's world brought back to the big screen," said Abrams. "Alex and Bob wrote an amazing script that embraces and respects Trek canon, but charts its own course. Our goal is to make a picture for everyone — life-long fans and the uninitiated. Needless to say, I am honored and excited to be part of this next chapter of Star Trek."

Brad Grey, chairman and CEO, Paramount Pictures, said, "We could not be more thrilled to be back in business with J.J. Abrams. The revival of the 'Star Trek' franchise is an important part of Paramount's turnaround."