The main advantage of clouds, where you can access your data anywhere, can be just as easily achieved by a home server, for example. And nowadays, just about any computer, even a Intel Atom PC drawing less power than a tungsten bulb would work as a file server. Granted, it takes expertise, but setting up a basic home server can easily be automated. The only reason cloud computing is flourishing instead is hype. People don't realize if cloud computing ever becomes the norm, Google would start charging their services.

Who the hell modded this up?

I've also been looking through a 14" at the Sun for year. It isn't dangerous, you just need a solar filter, and make sure its in good condition.

Quite false...

That was months ago. Also, it takes a decent scope to see detail on saturn, such as a C5. A department store scope would never be able to.

I'm particularly bad in his aspect...the first proper scope I ever used was...a 14" observatory Dall Kirkham. But desensitized? No. Seeing them through a real telescope is just...different. It is never like looking at pictures, no matter how good the pictures are. But I do have to agree, part of the fun of star gazing comes from the satisfaction of finding a difficult object...I can still remember finding Ring nebula through a 5" for the first time!

Prime Directive ;)

Tsk tsk... You saying a 6" Schmidt would beat a 3.5" Apo? It really depends on what you are looking at.

It's new moon right now!

Depends on your skies, more location, how late you are willing to stay until, and of course your scope. For starters, try Pleiads and Orion nebula. If my guess of your position is close enough, you should be able to see both just after the sun sets completely, together with Jupiter. Mars and Saturn should come up much later. If you are feeling adventurous, try Double Cluster, M44 (Beehive), and Andromeda. Those objects I mentioned are typically visible in Binoculars, so should pose no problem for a telescope. The last 3, however, may or may not be naked-eye visible (again, depending on various factors, such like light pollution), and even if they are, might require experienced observers to pick out, so might be hard to find.

Problem is, not enough dark nebulae has been detected to accound for dark matter. However, there are a class of dark matter candidates, "Massive Compact Halo Objects", that are made of "normal matter", just harder to detect than most.

No. It has unprecedented resolution for far-infared, but definitely not the first IR space telescope. Enough matter to account for dark matter would form huge structures due to gravity (assuming nebulosity), and thus if they are detectable at Herschel frequencies, they would haven been detected.

What disturbes me is how the "hotspot" appears in the same location every cycle. It would of course make sense if the poles are hotter, but that the poles are significantly hotter doesn't make sense in itself, given the convection going on in most stars, and that hot gases/plasma would move to areas of lower gravity, in other words, the equator. And that the pole sticking out, implying a cigar-shaped star at peak brightness (whereas centripetal force should make it an oblate sphere bulging in equatorial directions...)

If it were really a star pulsating, shouldn't it show irregular patches? I mean, granulation in our sun is not static over a year... Thus I believe they are overlooking the obvious.

It really really looks like a elliptical eclipsing binary, with one dim red giant, and a bright smaller white star. Note: The video is false color.