Scientists with the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program are studying pictures of Uranus and Neptune sent by the Hubble telescope during the period where these ice giants are closet to Earth. These unique new images give us a weather report from more than a billion miles away. The "changing of the seasons" is a new area of study, as Uranus takes 84 of our years to orbit the sun. This image shows that the normally blue planet is covered in white at its north pole.

The large white cap strewn over the north pole of Uranus is particularly dramatic. The likely cause of this feature has to do with the planet’s unique tilt, which causes sunlight to shine directly onto the north polar regions for an extended period of time during the summer. It’s currently mid-summer at Uranus’ north pole, resulting in the protracted white cap.

“The November 2018 image of Uranus occurs at a time 10 years after the equinox, when the northern hemisphere was just emerging into spring sunlight after spending decades in polar winter,” Leigh Fletcher, an astronomer at the University of Leicester, told Gizmodo. “Back in 2007, there didn’t appear to be anything like this polar cap over the springtime pole. But as time progressed, a reflective band—whitish against Uranus’ blue hues—began to appear encircling the north pole. And now, 10 years on, that band has turned into a thick polar cap of aerosols that’s hiding the deeper polar region from view.”

While we think of white on a planet's pole as ice and snow, this white area is the mist from a vast storm. But it's not the only thing going on. The OPAL program is also analyzing other storms on both Uranus and Neptune, which you can read about at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and M.H. Wong and A. Hsu/University of California, Berkeley)

In 1912, the RMS Carpathia left New York City en route to Croatia, but had to abort the journey in order to rescue the survivors of the Titanic. The ship took on an extra 705 people and three dogs, then turned around and headed back to New York. Afterward, the Carpathia crew were treated as the heroes they were, with medals and honors. The public tributes came to be embarrassing for Captain Arthur Henry Rostron, such as the time he went to a theater for a variety show and was obliged to make a speech.  

A week after the performance, just before the Carpathia set sail for London from the Curnard pier, Miss Grace Kemble and Miss Irene Claire—both chorus girls with the theater company—presented Captain Rostrand with big kisses and a tiny kitten. (Reportedly hundreds of unmarried women gave the captain a kiss, so the kitten made Grace and Irene stand out from the crowd.)

While the captain was basking in the attention, one jealous third mate reportedly lifted the kitten to inspect him for any white hairs or whiskers (the presence of even one white hair or whisker on an all-black cat was considered a bad omen to sailors.) Not finding a single white hair, the third mate heaved a sigh of relief and patted the new mascot on his arched back.

The captain assured the women that the kitten, who was later named Captain, would be provided with luxurious quarters in his cabin.

Read about the kitten, the captain, and the Carpathia, as well as New York's Chelsea Piers, at The Hatching Cat. -via Strange Company

A man in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania, left his five-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom house and moved to nearby Philadelphia. He then rented out the home on Airbnb, at a premium price due to its special feature. The home is now for sale, listed for $750,000 with realtor Melissa Leonard. She posted the listing with an extensive slideshow of pictures. That's when the house went viral, because the special feature that drew Airbnb customers was a "sex dungeon," a large bedroom in the basement with a swing, a bed equipped with bars and chains, and various BDSM apparatus and accessories. The basement room is no longer included in the real estate listing, but you can see the pictures at Buzzfeed. The resulting publicity drew TV news crews, police, gawkers, interested buyers, and angry neighbors to the house. In a phone interview with Leonard, this exchange was overheard.

I had Philly police here, and all the TV channels.

Hold on, now the neighbors are flagging me down. They’re really upset. You probably want to listen to this. Hello, sir.

Male voice: Are you the real estate agent?

Leonard: Yes. I’m Melissa.

Male voice: We’re very upset about this whole thing. We do not want something like this in our neighborhood. Take that off the internet. That’s disgusting. We don’t want that.

Leonard: Sir, if the owner wants those photos on the listing, that’s their choice!

Male voice: You’ve got to take them down! We live next door and we don’t want this!

Leonard: You’re angry at me but you’re really angry at the owner. I’m trying to sell the house as fast as possible.

Male voice: People are all over the neighborhood and they’re all saying they’re here to see the sex house!  

Read the story of the viral home listing in the interview at Slate.

(Image credit: Melissa Leonard/Coldwell Banker)

If the static frame of this Instagram video hadn't given it away, the beginning might have come across as a horror film. The cat's name is Malt, and he carries his bunny everywhere.  



Malt lives in Japan and plays with plenty of toys, but nothing beats the oversized plush rabbit for parading around as his conquered prey.



When he's not toting the bunny, Malt doesn't mind to pose for pictures, even in costume. You can see more of Malt at Instagram. -via Boing Boing

Let's be clear: country music has been around a long time, evolving from folk music, and has no real birthplace. But the first successful recording studio that produced country music is at 152 Nassau Street NW in Atlanta. In 1923, Okeh Records executive Ralph Peer set up shop there and recorded “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane” by Fiddlin’ John Carson. The first pressing of 500 records sold quickly.

Peer also recorded black Atlanta musicians including the blues singer Fannie Mae Goosby and the pianist Eddie Heyward. The sessions proved successful enough that OKeh and other labels sent scouts to cities such as Memphis and New Orleans to seek out talent there. It’s that mix of early blues, jazz, and country that makes what happened on Nassau Street “a truly unique Atlanta story,” Kessler says.

“There were folks coming into the city, whether they were coming down from the mountains or in from the former plantations … coming into an industrialized city, and they were going to be sharing their cultures together,” he says.   

So the building at 152 Nassau is a historical spot, but it may soon be demolished for a new project, and you won't believe who is behind those plans. An article at Atlas Obscura runs down the history of Okeh Records' Atlanta studio, Fiddlin’ John Carson, the city's ambivalent attitude on historical preservation, and the fight to save the building.

(Image credit: Matt Smith)

A fisherman is bringing in his haul in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, when a bald eagle decides he wants some. You'd expect this kind of behavior from a seagull, but you'd just bat a seagull away. It's hard to say "no" to a large raptor under federal protection. Eagles rarely get this close to people intentionally, so the bird must have been both hungry and aware of its power. Besides, his friends are watching to see if he has any luck. Once he gets his fish, the eagle is even willing to be petted! -via Digg

A cuneiform tablet from the ancient city of Ur has been dated to 1,600 BC or so. Since most people were illiterate then, and inscribing clay tablets was not a simple process, these type of records are often something important, like historic records or inventories. This particular tablet, however, contains the story of an argument between a clothes cleaner and a customer as they arrange a job. The points made are completely familiar to modern audiences, and even quite funny in places. It's a rare "slice of life" record of ancient Mesopotamia. But why would such a conversation be committed to clay?

Roth says that the text was likely used to educate scribes. The text is modeled after dialogues and riddles that would have been classics at that time. The garment the cleaner is tasked with washing is a luxury item, with many features that require special treatment, such as fringes, complex weaving, and embroidered adornments. These details offer the opportunity to bring in a technical vocabulary, as well as grammatical quirks. Like the school exercise in which children have to instruct an alien in how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in excruciating detail, this basic task is used to illustrate a great deal about many aspects of the culture at once—and is entertaining to boot.

Read what was said between the picky customer and the annoyed launderer at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Aziz1005)

White chocolate may strike you as an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Some even say that white chocolate is not chocolate at all. Well, that depends on how you define chocolate. The main ingredient in white chocolate is cocoa butter, which comes from the cocoa bean, but it has no cocoa! Find out all about white chocolate in this video from Reactions. -via Boing Boing

Forestry professor Jon Martin was out in the woods of Wisconsin at night, using a UV flashlight to search for fluorescent lichens, fungi, and any other fluorescent life, when he encountered a flying squirrel. He pointed his flashlight at it, and was astonished to see the rodent glow in a bubblegum pink color! Martin contacted biologist Paula Spaeth Anich, and together they set out to investigate. They checked out specimens of all three species of North American flying squirrel at museums. All but one specimen glowed under UV light, while non-flying squirrels did not.

While other animals fluoresce—puffins’ bills and chameleon’s bones give off an eerie, blue glow under UV light, for example—the only other mammals known to have fluorescent fur are about two dozen species of opossum. These marsupials, scattered across the Americas, aren’t closely related to flying squirrels, live in different ecosystems, and have a different diet.

But flying squirrels do share one thing with the opossums: they’re all active at night and twilight, where other squirrels are mostly diurnal.

Read more about fluorescent pink flying squirrels at National Geographic, and since that sounds like a hallucination, see photographic evidence of their pink fluorescence.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Cephas)

A time-lapse video taken through a microscope shows us the miracle of life as it happens. A single cell divides, again and again, and begins to form structures just as its DNA ordains. In just a few minutes, this amorphous blob becomes an Alpine newt. This stunning film is from Dutch director Jan van IJken.

Fluffy's owners went looking for her in Kalispell, Montana, on January 31, when the temperature was only 8 degrees above zero (-13C). They found her stiff and unresponsive in a snowbank, matted with snow, as you see here.

Dr. Jevon Clark, who works at the Animal Clinic of Kalispell, told ABC News when they brought Fluffy to the clinic her temperature was so slow it didn't even register on a thermometer -- with a bottom range of 90 degrees. According to Clark, cats' temperatures normally are around 101 degrees.

After about two hours of using warm water and blankets, the cat’s temperature was still too low, so they took her to the emergency room. After a few more hours, Fluffy finally began to show signs of recovery.

The clinic waited several days to be sure, and then announced earlier this week that Fluffy has made a complete recovery. However, one thing has changed permanently- Fluffy is now an indoor cat. ABC News has the story. -via reddit

(Images credit: Animal Clinic of Kalispell)

A couple of years ago, NASA released a set of artistic posters designed to raise excitement about the prospect of traveling to the red planet. More recently, SarcasticRover gave them a makeover.  

NASA made Mars recruitment posters, but the slogans are all wrong so Im going to fix them.

See all eight posters with new text at Threadreader, or follow the responses in the original Twitter thread.  -via Metafilter

What term do you use for a carbonated soft drink? Since I don't drink any, and only buy it for parties, I say "soda pop." Others around me call it pop. What you call these drinks mostly depends on where you are from. However, when people say "pop" in a soda state or vice versa, everyone knows what they mean. Then there are people who ask for a Coke and then have to specify which kind. Go figure. Conde Nast talked to people from all 50 states about which term they use. Randall Munroe at xkcd responded to this with a map with much more detail on the terms used in different areas of the US.

I might start referring to such drinks as seltzer or carbonics in the future. -via Laughing Squid

Katlyn Roberts thought she knew a lot about Egyptian artifacts, but made a new discovery on her second visit to the Cairo Museum. Locals know it, some visitors know it, but it's not common knowledge that many ancient Egyptian statues were made with realistic glass and crystal eyes. The effect is very different from looking at a statue with cold, blank, stone eyes.

I was looking at a person, not a statue. I’d never experienced anything like this before in my life. I was seeing ancient Egypt through a whole new dimension. I felt like all I needed to do was reach out and brush the clay from his face and he would blink and his cheek would be hot to the touch. Either he was here or I was there but one of us was outside of our space-time and acknowledging the other.

I was having a deeply existential experience.

And that was after she'd already seen other statues with glass eyes. You can see them, too, and read about the delightful tour guide who revealed this secret, at Medium.

(Image credit: Katlyn Roberts)

The experimental film The Private Life of a Cat by Czechoslovakian-born filmmaker Alexander Hammid and Ukrainian-born filmmaker Maya Deren was produced in 1944. There's no sound. It follows a cat giving birth to a litter of kittens and raising them to weaning age. The father participates, too, and even teaches them how to climb! And just to ease your mind, cat sex is implied, but not shown. (via Boing Boing)