ZODIACAL LIGHT 

The Prophet Muhammed is known to have described zodiacal light in reference to the timing of the five daily prayers, calling it the false dawn, or al Fajr al Khaadib.

Muslim oral tradition preserves numerous sayings, or hadith, in which Muhammed describes the difference between the light of false dawn, appearing in the sky long after sunset, and the light of the first band of horizontal light at sunrise, the true dawn. Practitioners of Islam use the Prophet’s descriptions of zodiacal light to avoid errors in determining the timing of daily prayers. (source: Wikipedia)

This phenomenon was first investigated by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1683 and first explained by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in 1684.

Visible this weekend after sunset, look west for a ghostly triangle of light jutting upward from the horizon. If you can see it, you’ve spotted the Zodiacal Light:

The zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, whitish glow seen in the night sky which appears to extend up from the vicinity of the sun along the ecliptic or zodiac. In mid-northern latitudes, the zodiacal light is best observed in the western sky in the spring after the evening twilight has completely disappeared, or in the eastern sky in the autumn just before the morning twilight appears. (source: Wikipedia).

 A subtle glow appears over the small-town lights of Borrego Springs in Southern California’s Anza-Borrego Desert.

 Photographer Dennis Mammana. 

CODICES

Only four Maya glyph books, called codices, survive. In 2012 EYE OF THE SHAMAN there is a 5th. This “missing mystical”  5th is the, original one that was created by Shaman Way Pech.

Codices are painted on lime-whitened bark paper, folded accordion-style. The codices were likely produced in the late post-Classical period (1200-1519 AD). Some material in the codices , including astronomical tables, appears to have been copied or adapted from manuscripts of the Classical period (200 – 900 AD). The long count entry date of the Dresden Codex eclipse table, for example, correlates to 755 AD. This may date the original version of the table ( source: members.shaw.ca/mjfinley/zodiac.html)

MAYAN ZODIAC

The Paris Codex illustrates thirteen constellations along the ecliptic (one more than the twelve in the Old World zodiac). The constellations are apparently not illustrated in the order they appear in the heavens. Instead, each illustration is separated from the next by a count of 168 days.

In 2012 EYE OF THE SHAMAN I create a premise that powerful geomagnetic storms will wreak havoc with our  electronically driven technology  thus rendering our society’s functionality useless.  It’s not as far fetched as one might think. 

Last night the sun’s magnetic field near Earth tipped south, opening a crackin our planet’s defenses against the solar wind. Charged particles poured in, fueling a brief but beautiful display of aurora borealis. 

(source: http://www.spaceweather.com/)

A solar wind stream flowing from the indicated coronal hole will hit Earth’s magnetic field later today or tomorrow. Credit:SOHO Extreme UV Telescope.

Evidence Mounts

The next solar cycle is going to be a big one.

Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Their forecast is based on historical records of geomagnetic storms.Hathaway explains: “When a gust of solar wind hits Earth’s magnetic field, the impact causes the magnetic field to shake. If it shakes hard enough, we call it a geomagnetic storm.”

In the extreme, these storms cause power outages and make compass needles swing in the wrong direction.

Auroras are a beautiful side-effect.

Hathaway and Wilson looked at records of geomagnetic activity stretching back almost 150 years and noticed something useful:. “The amount of geomagnetic activity now tells us what the solar cycle is going to be like 6 to 8 years in the future,” says Hathaway. A picture is worth a thousand words: