Amazing Partial Eclipse Image - But That's No Sun Spot!

Astrophotographer Thierry Legault traveled from his native France to the Sultanate of Oman to take pictures of the eclipse - take a closer look though.. that's no sun spot - IT'S A TIE FIGHTER!! Actually, its the International Space Station, hadn't noticed the similarity between the two until about 30seconds ago.

Full image on Discover here

By the way, its *obviously* the International Space Station - if you are on twitter, you can get updates of when the ISS will pass over head to your exact location - no really - follow it here

End Of Music On The High Street

Just over two years ago as the recession really started to bite, Woolworths went into administration - we wrote about it on our Sky News Business blog.

For the music industry, it was a sign.. only a few years earlier, Woolies was THE place to sell singles, and was one of the main distributers of CDs to other shops through its EUK business nationwide. The closure of both businesses also took a few independent record labels out with it.. Zavvi, born out of the Virgin Megastores suffered from EUK's demise, and it soon followed Woolies, leaving tens of thousands out of work. It was clear that people, especially teens, were turning their backs on physical music, opting for digital formats. Now, unless you've been asleep since 2000 (or don't care) none of this should be headline news, but it did leave only one music retailer on the high street, HMV..

So two years on, and just before Christmas HMV published their figures, It made a pre-tax loss of £41.3million in the 6 months to October 2010, compared to a £24.9m loss last year, and they saw a 10% fall in the sale of CDs - on this news, shares slumped by 20% - It sounded like the final nail in the coffin of high street music sales and this was before the heavy December snow.

Today its been announced that HMV will close 40 of its 285 stores over the next 12 months - so that's it for physical music sales in the UK, unless you count the supermarkets - and the danger with them, they only stock records that they *think* are going to sell well. That's fine for Michael Buble, Westlife, Take That and alike - but not really good for music. Singles sell well digitally, albums do not. With nowhere to buy a physical album, sales will slow even further. Only ONE album released in 2010 sold more than a million copies in the UK - Take That's Progress. What about non-mainstream music? Up and coming artists? Acts that aren't signed to major labels with healthy promotional budgets? Who is going to headline the future music festivals?

HMV published their annual Poll Of Polls yesterday - combining the polls from the likes of Q, Mojo, NME, Kerrang!, Uncut, Mixmag, Wire, The Fly, Hot Press, GQ and Time Out as well as online music sites to find out the UK critics albums of the year (I did something similar on a huge Excel Spreadsheet last year, they've saved me the trouble!!) - this list as posted on Record Of The Day here.

What is once again interesting about these polls, is combining them to sales (when I've got the figures I will). Arcade Fire won the poll of polls by a mile - but it has yet to sell 300k records in the UK.

The question is, how many of these albums will you be able to get in the supermarkets?

The BBC is also counting down to its annual acts and artists to watch this year in its Sound Of 2011 - again, how many of these will have albums stocked by Tesco's, Sainsbury's etc?

THE 2010 HMV POLL OF POLLS TOP 50

1. Arcade Fire / The Suburbs
2. The National / High Violet
3. LCD Soundsystem / This Is Happening
4. Beach House / Teen Dream
5. Janelle Monae / Archandroid
6. Vampire Weekend / Contra
7. Yeasayer / Odd Blood
8. Gorillaz / Plastic Beach
9. Caribou / Swim
10. Ariel Pink / Before Today
11. Kanye West / My Beautiful Dark, Twisted Fantasy
12. Joanna Newsom / Have One On Me
13. Gill Scott Heron / I'm New Here
14. Sleigh Bells / Treats
15. Foals / Total Life Forever
16. Villagers / Becoming A Jackal
17. Laura Marling / I Speak Because I Can
18. These New Puritans / Hidden
19. Black Keys / Brothers
20. Deerhunter / Halcyon Digest
21. Hot Chip / One Life Stand
22. Robyn / Body Talk
23. John Grant / Queen Of Denmark
24. Paul Weller / Wake Up The Nation
25. MGMT / Congratulations
26. Avi Buffalo / Avi Buffalo
27. Manic Street Preachers / Postcards From A Young Man
28. Four Tet / There Is Love In You
29. Grinderman / Grinderman 2
30. Robert Plant / Band Of Joy
31. Warpaint / The Fool
32. Big Boi / Sir Luscious Left Foot
33. Flying Lotus / Cosmogramma
34. Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate / Ali And Toumani
35. Broken Bells / Broken Bells
36. Best Coast / Crazy For You
37. Marina and the Diamonds / Family Jewels
38. Oneohtrix Point Never / Returnal
39. Edwyn Collins / Losing Sleep
40. Glasser / Ring
41. Swans / My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope
42. Field Music / Field Music
43. Zola Jesus / Stridulum II
44. Steve Mason / Boys Outside
45. Deftones / Diamond Eyes
46. Plan B / The Defamation Of Strickland Banks
47. Neil Young / Le Noise
48. MIA / Maya
49. Take That / Progress
50. Drums / Drums

Simon's Cat "Santa Claws"

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

We were lucky enough to be in the right place, at the right time to see a total eclipse of the sun back in August 1999 - we were near Lizard Point in Cornwall and the forecast was bobbins - I vividly remember sitting in a field, above cliffs looking at a grey and over cast sky thinking I should have stayed in London and being generally grumpy, as well as cross for dragging so many people down to the South West for this when, with moments to go, the sky in our area cleared slightly and we all saw this natural wonder - the speed at which it went dark was incredible, the temperature dropped massively, yes, the birds did stop singing - but the moment the sun popped out from behind the moon and blasted us with light and heat once again was simply breathtaking - its power is something we all take for granted. Got it on VHS somewhere, need to convert it to share the experience, but for this, here's Professor Brian Cox talking about it for his fantastic Wonders Of The Solar System for the BBC;


Anyway, those that know me (Ritch) well, will know how much I look forward to the lighter nights / clocks going to BST - and to celebrate this in 2010, we had a lunar eclipse on the Winter Solstice. It's not as spectacular or as rare as a total eclipse of the sun, but a fascinating display all the same - we weren't so lucky with the cloud cover last night, so here's a stunning time lapse from Florida.

Photographic Documentation Of A Space Shuttle Launch

The noisiest noise that man has made other than a nuke I guess - quite a long film, but has some stunning shots of a shuttle launch

Talking Piano

No tricks, it's a grand piano talking - its very eerie - shame about the german narrator.

"You SUCK At Photoshop" Series

By far the funniest and original tutorial series on YouTube - running over several episodes, Donnie Hoyle teaches viewers how to use Photoshop, but it's also an insight into his sad, sad life and how it falls apart. It won several Webby Awards in 2008, the first episode went live almost 3 years ago - so in the words of b3ta.com, its a bit GC - but then again, it deserves to be watched again and again.. full 20 episode playlist available to watch here

In the first tutorial, Donnie pulls a digital end-around on a restraining order and vandalizes a Vanagon.


In the second, Donnie shows you how to fix mistakes you've made.


In the third, Donnie makes a very big mistake go away.


There are 20 glorious episodes to watch, click here to see them all - but you MUST watch them in order!