Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)

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50,000 Kilometers over the Sun

Explanation: What's happening at the edge of the Sun? Although it may look like a monster is rampaging, what is pictured is actually only a monster prominence -- a sheath of thin gas held above the surface by the Sun's magnetic field. The solar event was captured just this past weekend with a small telescope, with the resulting image then inverted and false-colored. As indicated with illustrative lines, the prominence rises over 50,000 kilometers above the Sun's surface, making even our 12,700-diameter Earth seem small by comparison. Below the monster prominence is active region 12585, while light colored filaments can be seen hovering over a flowing solar carpet of fibrils. Filaments are actually prominences seen against the disk of the Sun, while similarly, fibrils are actually spicules seen against the disk. Energetic events like this are becoming less common as the Sun evolves toward a minimum in its 11-year activity cycle.

Source: APOD, 2016 September 19

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What would it look like to return home from outside our galaxy?

Source: APOD, 2016 September 26

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Trifid, Lagoon, and Mars



Source: APOD, 2016 October 6

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Just because it fits somewhat with the latest astronomy news (see below)...

Galaxies from the Altiplano



Source: APOD, 2016 October 13

Surprise: New Brit Hubble analysis finds 2,000 billion galaxies, 10x previous count

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Herschel's Orion

Explanation: This dramatic image peers within M42, the Orion Nebula, the closest large star-forming region. Using data at infrared wavelengths from the Herschel Space Observatory, the false-color composite explores the natal cosmic cloud a mere 1,500 light-years distant. Cold, dense filaments of dust that would otherwise be dark at visible wavelengths are shown in reddish hues. Light-years long, the filaments weave together bright spots that correspond to regions of collapsing protostars. The brightest bluish area near the top of the frame is warmer dust heated by the hot Trapezium cluster stars that also power the nebula's visible glow. Herschel data has recently indicated ultraviolet starlight from the hot newborn stars likely contributes to the creation of carbon-hydrogen molecules, basic building blocks of life. This Herschel image spans about 3 degrees on the sky. That's about 80 light-years at the distance of the Orion Nebula.  

Source: APOD, 2016 October 14

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Gemini Observatory North

Explanation: It does look like a flying saucer, but this technologically advanced structure is not here to deliver the wise extraterrestrial from the scifi classic movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. It is here to advance our knowledge of the Universe though. Shown sitting near the top of a mountain in Hawaii, the dome of the Gemini Observatory North houses one of two identical 8.1-meter diameter telescopes. Used with its southern hemisphere twin observatory in Chile, the two can access the entire sky from planet Earth. Constructed from 85 exposures lasting 30 seconds each with camera fixed to a tripod, the image also clearly demonstrates that the Earth did not stand still. Adjusted to be slighter brighter at the ends of their arcs, the concentric star trails centered on the North Celestial Pole are a reflection of Earth's rotation around its axis. Close to the horizon at Hawaiian latitdues, Polaris, the North Star, makes the shortest star trail. The fainter denser forest of star trails toward the right are in the rising Milky Way.

Source: APOD, 2016 October 15

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Just because they are beautiful...

The Tulip in the Swan



Source: APOD, 2016 October 20


Giant Red Spider Nebula



Source: NASA Image of the Day, 2016 October 21

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Eagle Aurora over Norway



Source: APOD, 2016 October 23

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Not exactly an APOD, but might be interesting for stargazers and other people as well:

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A Giant Squid in the Flying Bat



Source: APOD, 2016 October 27

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Mosaic of the Arctic

The fragility of our home planet is apparent in this view of the whole Arctic region in September 2012, when sea ice reached its lowest minimum extent ever observed in the satellite record.

Source: NASA Image of the Day, 2016 October 28

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Haunting the Cepheus Flare

Explanation: Spooky shapes seem to haunt this jeweled expanse, drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus. Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds faintly visible in dimly reflected starlight. Far from your own neighborhood on planet Earth, they lurk along the plane of the Milky Way at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away. Over 2 light-years across and brighter than the other ghostly apparitions, vdB 141 or Sh2-136 is also known as the Ghost Nebula, seen at the right of the starry field of view. Within the nebula are the telltale signs of dense cores collapsing in the early stages of star formation.

Source: APOD, 2016 October 28

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Any vampire fans?

Moonset at Whitby Abbey

Explanation: October's Hunters Moon shines near the horizon, setting beyond the arches of Whitby Abbey in this eerie night scene. The moonlight partly illuminates the ruined Benedictine abbey's grounds and walls on a cliff overlooking the North Sea from England's Yorkshire coast. Fans of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula will recognize the abbey and town of Whitby as the location of the Transylvanian count's shipwrecked landing on English shores. There fiction's most famous vampire transformed into an immense dog, jumped ashore and ran up the cliff to the ruined abbey. A 360 degree panorama, the dramatic fisheye view was created from 23 digitally stitched photos.

Source: APOD, 2016 September 29

[Dekalb_Blues]

Not exactly an APOD, but might be interesting for stargazers and other people as well:
[vid: "ScienceCasts: 2016 Ends with Three Supermoons"]

Hurrah for apogee-syzygy!

Related lunatic phenomena:


Minimoon


Gnomoon


Multimoons

Bobsledmoon

Coppertonemoon http://i.ebayimg.com/t/MAGNET-Vintage-Coppertone-Girl-Dog-Tan-Color-Ad-Ads-/00/$(KGrHqUOKjME2+cbDcBoBN6lZJ!tBQ~~_45.JPG


Justplainmeanmoon   


Punkinsmoon  


Sophiesupermoon

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Halloween and the Ghost Head Nebula

Explanation: Halloween's origin is ancient and astronomical. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day, a day halfway between an equinox (equal day / equal night) and a solstice (minimum day / maximum night in the northern hemisphere). With a modern calendar however, even though Halloween occurs tomorrow, the real cross-quarter day will occur next week. Another cross-quarter day is Groundhog Day. Halloween's modern celebration retains historic roots in dressing to scare away the spirits of the dead. Perhaps a fitting tribute to this ancient holiday is this view of the Ghost Head Nebula taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. Similar to the icon of a fictional ghost, NGC 2080 is actually a star forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The Ghost Head Nebula spans about 50 light-years and is shown in representative colors.

Source: APOD, 2016 October 30

[Dekalb_Blues]

Text of message on back of pandensity picture-postcard from embodied Wanderer to its Greater Self:
===========================================================================



O Thou! (Sorry once again for the lack of adequate pronounery in this primitive language, which barely recognizes superorganism, much less superdimensional/densital metasuperorganism. Tant pis. Will try Arabic in next missive.) Having a wonderful embodied time in Time! Wish I were more you here-- am working on it, expect more capacity soon in your past. Meanwhilewhen, herenow's wherewhen I'm discretely/we're superimpositionally hanging out locally amongst the far-flung not to mention far-fetched Logoi of good old Infinite Timespace, amen. (See red-circled spot, obverso ^) Pardon my presumptuosity, but what was Our Infinite Creator (blessings be upon The One!!) thinking when cooking up this place?! Oy, what a one-horse backwater. If it wasn't for butter pecan soft ice cream cones, it would be a total loss. (Well, butter-rum, too. That's good stuff. In a place called Philadelphia, where the Sub-Logos evidently always shines on dysfunctional families and extended proxy families as they attempt comic hijinx, they have something called Rum Ham. But I digress.) They roll up the sidewalks around here come local horizonal Sub-Logos-set and black out for a third of their diurnal puttering-about. Of course it's failsafe contact with the Source, but even so, what with the deep-amnesiac-disinfo-dreamspinning, to the predators this is like a Smörgåsbord buffet (I jokingly refer to it as the "Smörgåsborg -- Resistance Is Futile". Ha. What?) Locals kinda weirdly dissociated from any realistic orientational context when they're "awake" but of course that's just how I like 'em: if I should accidently polarize neg. it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel, and if pos. there's just no end of do-goodism to do. BTW, consider yourself lucky I didn't send the other postcard I have, exhibiting a specimen of their bizarre psycholinguistic dubious-humour rationale vis-à-vis their local sub-Logos-orbit neighbors mixed with their mythology and unbelievable anticarnate prudery.



P.S. It seems my host planet is the only one not named after some defunct tribal god, which is some kind of progress, I guess, but of course calling a sentient body "Soil" whose predominantly their-life-affording surface is three-quarters crucial-aqueous  (not to mention 100% crucial-gaseous) is just par for their goofily-inverted provincial mindset. And of course that word is of the language of one of the tribal conquerors of the other tribe. What a place! War all the time, past, present, future, real, imaginary--- war on poverty! war on drugs! war on terrorism! war on war!! how they love it!

P.P.S. Random cool specimens along spectrum of interesting Soil-thought:
One-stop shopping for bangin' scientific-y diagrams, by a typically self-contradictedly "atheistic" True Believer in their austerely hyperrationally autistic Science God:
http://religionisabadjoke.blogspot.com/2...earth.html

A pretty poetically-written bit of laterally-thinking allegory by one of us of [redacted], gently referring to one strand in the skein of the current Great Change:
http://genius.com/John-c-wright-prologue-annotated

One of us of [redacted], joyously pigment-slinging:
http://connectedinthedeep.com/guidepost-...mall-2009/

-- Cheers! Abrazos & salaams! Jai ho! Tippecanoe & Tyler Too! L.S.M.F.T.! No Irish Need Apply! Illuminati Confirmed!
Your devoted tentacular-tip prodigal Meanderer, [untranslatable], aka Southstar aka Qalb Dass aka DeKalb Blues

====================================================================


FXX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore", ca. Sept., 2011
Profoundly allegorical of something. God knows just what.


The meme metastasizes across domains, further altering the already precarious local cosmic balance
of Nortonian flow and dyna-flow.


"I don't know how humanity stands it
           with a painted paradise at the end of it
           without a painted paradise at the end of it"

                  ---- Ezra Pound, The Pisan Cantos (1948), from Canto LXXIV


  

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Not so pretty...

New Studies Get to the Bottom of Antarctic Melting

Researchers from NASA and the University of California, Irvine (UCI) have gained an unprecedented view of ice melting on the floating undersides of glaciers. In the process, they detected the fastest ongoing rates of glacier retreat ever observed in West Antarctica.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day, 2016 October 30

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Rains of Terror on Exoplanet HD 189733b

This Halloween, take a tour with NASA's Exoplanet Exploration site of some of the most terrifying and mind-blowing destinations in our galaxy. In this image, the nightmare world of HD 189733 b is the killer you never see coming. To the human eye, this far-off planet looks bright blue. But any space traveler confusing it with the friendly skies of Earth would be badly mistaken. The weather on this world is deadly. Its winds blow up to 5,400 mph (2 km/s) at seven times the speed of sound, whipping all would-be travelers in a sickening spiral around the planet. And getting caught in the rain on this planet is more than an inconvenience; it’s death by a thousand cuts. This scorching alien world possibly rains glass—sideways—in its howling winds. The cobalt blue color comes not from the reflection of a tropical ocean, as on Earth, but rather a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing high clouds laced with silicate particles.

Source: NASA Image of the Day, 2016 October 31

Ghost Aurora over Canada



Source: APOD, 2016 October 31

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M27: The Dumbbell Nebula

Explanation: The first hint of what will become of our Sun was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets. The 27th object on Messier's list, now known as M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula, the type of nebula our Sun will produce when nuclear fusion stops in its core. M27 is one of the brightest planetary nebulae on the sky, and can be seen toward the constellation of the Fox (Vulpecula) with binoculars. It takes light about 1000 years to reach us from M27, shown above in colors emitted by hydrogen and oxygen. Understanding the physics and significance of M27 was well beyond 18th century science. Even today, many things remain mysterious about bipolar planetary nebula like M27, including the physical mechanism that expels a low-mass star's gaseous outer-envelope, leaving an X-ray hot white dwarf.

Source: APOD, 2016 November 02

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Beautiful!

NGC 253: Dusty Island Universe



Source: APOD, 2016 November 03

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Arctic Sea Ice Is Losing Its Bulwark

In 1984, there were 1.86 million square kilometers of old ice spread across the Arctic at its yearly minimum extent. In September 2016, there were only 110,000 square kilometers of old ice left.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day, 2016 November 04

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Not exactly astronomy, but still impressive!

Inverted City Beneath Clouds

Explanation: How could that city be upside-down? The city, Chicago, was actually perfectly right-side up. The long shadows it projected onto nearby Lake Michigan near sunset, however, when seen in reflection, made the buildings appear inverted. This fascinating, puzzling, yet beautiful image was captured by a photographer in 2014 on an airplane on approach to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. The Sun can be seen both above and below the cloud deck, with the latter reflected in the calm lake. As a bonus, if you look really closely -- and this is quite a challenge -- you can find another airplane in the image, likely also on approach to the same airport.

Source: APOD, 2016 November 07

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Why are they always so much fitting the date...?

The Cosmic Web of the Tarantula Nebula



Source: APOD, 2016 November 08

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The Heart and Soul Nebulas



Source: APOD, 2016 November 16


Cloudscape Over the Philippine Sea



Source: NASA Image of the Day, 2016 November 16

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Satellite Detects Human Contribution to Atmospheric CO2

Measurements from OCO-2 will provide a baseline for monitoring changes in emissions.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day, 2016 November 17

[Dekalb_Blues]

~~






Wanderer-Nerd Sci-Rap, an underappreciated genre:
Take it easy, kid -- hey, I remember my first hit of acid, too, y'know. It was huuuuuge.
Note the adoring Mdm-Librarianish lab lassie -- it's always the quiet types that burn with that inner mounting flame.







 Dealin' with it!

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Hubble Spies Spiral Galaxy

Spiral galaxy NGC 3274 is a relatively faint galaxy located over 20 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion).

Source: NASA Image of the Day, 2016 November 22

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NGC 7635: Bubble in a Cosmic Sea

Explanation: Do you see the bubble in the center? Seemingly adrift in a cosmic sea of stars and glowing gas, the delicate, floating apparition in this widefield view is cataloged as NGC 7635 - The Bubble Nebula. A mere 10 light-years wide, the tiny Bubble Nebula and the larger complex of interstellar gas and dust clouds are found about 11,000 light-years distant, straddling the boundary between the parental constellations Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Also included in the breathtaking vista is open star cluster M52 (upper left), some 5,000 light-years away. The featured image spans about two degrees on the sky corresponding to a width of about 375 light-years at the estimated distance of the Bubble Nebula.

Source: APOD, 2016 November 23

[Dekalb_Blues]

~~


The cryptic language and enigmatic ever-changing geometric symbols have yet to be deciphered:


So bloody alien it won't play when embedded in a B4th post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdAlaqzS..._C&index=1

An early channeler of the L.-C. mystic vibes:


A later channeler:


Representation of typical member of old-school immigrant demographic that boogied to the L.-C. sonic stylings '
way back when, here on Earth:



ON-A-RELATED-NOTE EARTHIAN POLITICAL INTEL DEPT. -- The shocking-but-true behind-the-scenes backstory of
hinky doings from her First-Lady days that came back to bite Mdm C. in her recent Presidential bid:


It seems what really gained the ire of the powerful, ruthless, and shadowy MJ-12 faction (who never
forgive, and never forget) nine months or so after the above contretemps, was her transparently bogus 
"adoption" ploy:


And of course Hubby's peskily prurient peccadilloes from those days didn't help matters either:
 Adonai & out.