...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Thursday, July 14, 2005
      ( 6:36 AM )
 
Escape

It has actually arrived. Today is the very last day I will ever attend graduate school. It's been a VERY long 14 months (with many of my faithful blog readers left by the wayside due to my inconsistency over the last year!). But I survived! Master's Degree, teaching license in hand, I will begin my first job as a high school social studies teacher in August. But until then --- REST! The first leg of my holiday from brainwork begins this afternoon when I and my family will trek up to the glorious Olympic Penninsula for a long weekend of rainforest hiking, summit climbing and general beach relaxing. If you have never been to the Olympic Coast, you have really missed one of the wonders this nation holds for us.

I will be taking with me my new telescope with which to view the vivid starry nights - as some of you know, my growing hobby is amateur astrononomy (see sidebar links), one other thing that I had to leave on the wayside this last year. But I am planning on picking it up again with vigor this weekend. In celebration, I share this REALLY cool discovery:

A newly discovered planet has bountiful sunshine, with not one, not two, but three suns glowing in its sky.

It is the first extrasolar planet found in a system with three stars. How a planet was born amidst these competing gravitational forces will be a challenge for planet formation theories.

"The environment in which this planet exists is quite spectacular," said Maciej Konacki from the California Institute of Technology. "With three suns, the sky view must be out of this world -- literally and figuratively."



Wow.

Have a great weekend, earthlings.

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