Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)

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The Dark Side of the Moon - fully illuminated



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

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Orion in Red and Blue



Source: APOD, 2016 April 13

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Explanation: What kind of clouds are these? Although their cause is presently unknown, such unusual atmospheric structures, as menacing as they might seem, do not appear to be harbingers of meteorological doom. Known informally as Undulatus asperatus clouds, they can be stunning in appearance, unusual in occurrence, are relatively unstudied, and have even been suggested as a new type of cloud. Whereas most low cloud decks are flat bottomed, asperatus clouds appear to have significant vertical structure underneath. Speculation therefore holds that asperatus clouds might be related to lenticular clouds that form near mountains, or mammatus clouds associated with thunderstorms, or perhaps a foehn wind -- a type of dry downward wind that flows off mountains. Such a wind called the Canterbury arch streams toward the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. The featured image, taken above Hanmer Springs in Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2005, shows great detail partly because sunlight illuminates the undulating clouds from the side.

Source: APOD, 2016 April 17

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The Bubble Nebula

Explanation: Blown by the wind from a massive star, this interstellar apparition has a surprisingly familiar shape. Cataloged as NGC 7635, it is also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the 7 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Above and left of the Bubble's center is a hot, O-type star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and around 45 times more massive than the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex lie a mere 7,100 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp, tantalizing view of the cosmic bubble is a composite of Hubble Space Telescope image data from 2016, released to celebrate the 26th anniversary of Hubble's launch.

Source: APOD, 2016 April 22


Pillars of Star Creation

Explanation: Newborn stars are forming in the Eagle Nebula. This image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, shows evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars. At each pillars' end, the intense radiation of bright young stars causes low density material to boil away, leaving stellar nurseries of dense EGGs exposed. The Eagle Nebula, associated with the open star cluster M16, lies about 7000 light years away. The pillars of creation were imaged again in 2007 by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, leading to the conjecture that the pillars may already have been destroyed by a local supernova, but light from that event has yet to reach the Earth.

Source: APOD, 2016 April 24

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The Angel Nebula

Explanation: The combined light of stars along the Milky Way are reflected by these cosmic dust clouds that soar some 300 light-years or so above the plane of our galaxy. Dubbed the Angel Nebula, the faint apparition is part of an expansive complex of dim and relatively unexplored, diffuse molecular clouds. Commonly found at high galactic latitudes, the dusty galactic cirrus can be traced over large regions toward the North and South Galactic poles. Along with the refection of starlight, studies indicate the dust clouds produce a faint reddish luminescence, as interstellar dust grains convert invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Also capturing nearby Milky Way stars and an array of distant background galaxies, the deep, wide-field 3x5 degree image spans about 10 Full Moons across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation Ursa Major.

Source: APOD, 2016 April 28

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Explanation: Planets, stars, nebulas and a galaxy -- this impressive image has them all. Closest to home are the two planets Mars (right) and Saturn (center), visible as the two bright orange spots in the upper half of the featured image. On the central right are the colorful Rho Ophiuchus star clouds featuring the bright orange star Antares lined up below Mars. These interstellar clouds contain both red emission nebulas and blue reflection nebulas. At the top right of the image is the Blue Horsehead reflection nebula. On the lower left are many dark absorption nebulas that extend from the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. The featured deep composite was composed of multiple deep exposures taken last month from Brazil. Although you need a telescope to see the nebulosities, Saturn and Mars will remain visible to the unaided eye this month toward the east, just after sunset.

Source: APOD, 2016 May 10

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Mercury's transit of the Sun on Monday (first time in a decade). Yes, it's the tiny speck on the left.

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Source: APOD, 2016 May 11

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I was going through this website and came across the pic they posted on 21 December 2012. Happy to see NASA has a sense of humour!

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121221.html

Explanation: Welcome to the December solstice, a day the world does not end ... even according to the Mayan Calendar. To celebrate, consider this dramatic picture of Orion rising over El Castillo, the central pyramid at Chichén Itzá, one of the great Mayan centers on the Yucatán peninsula. Also known as the Temple of Kukulkan it stands 30 meters tall and 55 meters wide at the base. Built up as a series of square terraces by the pre-Columbian civilization between the 9th and 12th century, the structure can be used as a calendar and is noted for astronomical alignments. In fact, the Mayans were accomplished astronomers and mathematicians, accurately using the cyclic motions of the stars, Sun, Moon, and planets to measure time and construct calendars. Peering through clouds in this night skyscape, stars in the modern constellation Orion the Hunter represented a turtle in the Mayan sky.

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Milky Way Over Quiver Tree Forest



Source: APOD, 2016 May 15

Stargazing from the ISS



Source: NASA Earth Observatory, 2016 May 16

The Orion Nebula in Visible and Infrared



Source: APOD, 2016 May 17

LL Orionis: When Cosmic Winds Collide

Explanation: What created this great arc in space? This arcing, graceful structure is actually a bow shock about half a light-year across, created as the wind from young star LL Orionis collides with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion's stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable star LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged sun. As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is formed, analogous to the bow wave of a boat moving through water or a plane traveling at supersonic speed. The slower gas is flowing away from the Orion Nebula's hot central star cluster, the Trapezium, located off the lower right hand edge of the picture. In three dimensions, LL Ori's wrap-around shock front is shaped like a bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the "bottom" edge. The complex stellar nursery in Orion shows a myriad of similar fluid shapes associated with star formation, including the bow shock surrounding a faint star at the upper right. Part of a mosaic covering the Great Nebula in Orion, this composite color image was recorded in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Source: APOD, 2016 May 22

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The Great Carina Nebula



Source: APOD, 2016 May 27

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Explanation: How did the universe evolve from such a smooth beginning? To help understand, computational cosmologists and NASA produced the featured time-lapse animated video depicting a computer simulation of part of the universe. The 100-million light-year simulation starts about 20 million years after the Big Bang and runs until the present. After a smooth beginning, gravity causes clumps of matter to form into galaxies which immediately begin falling toward each other. Soon, many of them condense into long filaments while others violently merge into a huge and hot cluster of galaxies. Investigating of potential universe attributes in simulations like this have helped shape the engineering design the James Webb Space Telescope, currently scheduled for launch in late 2018.

Source: APOD, 2016 May 30

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Sunrise Solstice over Stonehenge



Source: APOD, 2016 June 20

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The Dark Side of the Moon - fully illuminated

THIS JUST IN: Wikileaks has revealed a shockingly game-changing clip from film shot by U.S. Space Command covert low-pass lunar-darkside surveillance drone, showing what seems to be an intelligently-guided craft of some sort:










    

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The Pencil Nebula



Source: APOD,  2016 July 15

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The Orion Nebula in Infrared



Source: APOD,  2016 July 18

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Explanation: Wouldn't it be fun to color in the universe? If you think so, please accept this famous astronomical illustration as a preliminary substitute. You, your friends, your parents or children, can print it out or even color it digitally. While coloring, you might be interested to know that even though this illustration has appeared in numerous places over the past 100 years, the actual artist remains unknown. Furthermore, the work has no accepted name -- can you think of a good one? The illustration, first appearing in a book by Camille Flammarion in 1888, is used frequently to show that humanity's present concepts are susceptible to being supplanted by greater truths.

Source: APOD, 2016 July 19

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NASA's Hubble Looks to the Final Frontier



Source: NASA Image of the Day, 2016 July 21

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[Wood engraving from Flammarion's L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (Paris, 1888), p. 164: "Un missionnaire du moyen âge
raconte qu'il avait trouvé le point où le ciel et la Terre se touchent..." ("A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where heaven and earth touch..."]

.... Wouldn't it be fun to color in the universe? 
.... the work has no accepted name -- can you think of a good one? The illustration ... is used frequently to show that humanity's present concepts are susceptible to being supplanted by greater truths.

"The Universe Next Door", as the engraving is known to some of us in the gnosis biz. (See http://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthrea...9#pid79539 for the allusion -- my first post on this august forum, four+ years ago.)

"With respect to the bounds [of the Earth]... some monks of the tenth century of our era, bolder than the rest, say that, in making a voyage in search of the terrestrial paradise, they had found the point where the heaven and earth touch, and had even been obliged to lower their shoulders!" - - C. Flammarion, Les terres du ciel (Paris, 1884), p. 395.

Informative treatment of this illustration's provenance and meaning: http://kvmagruder.net/flatEarth/index.html

For me, the humor of this particular bit of art is its exquisite metaphorical capturing of what might be called the objective correlative of the actual transcendentalizing mechanism, in the real workaday world, of the breathtakingly mysterious process of enlightenment -- a process the perception of which is commonly (unenlightenedly, one might say) quite lost in a desert of misguided and misleading presuppositional beliefs about the concept of transcendence itself, and a fortiori how such an elusive thing is realized in our obdurately material world. Because one must paradoxically use the elements of a world notoriously illusional and transient to somehow build a bridge to the Real, there has to be a point where some everyday thing or activity in fact somehow constitutes a virtual portal to the Other; at some precise point the mundane must become functionally the magical. To someone not imaginatively attuned to the wondrous implications of the design of the crucial-time/place/person/thing/process-complex (notwithstanding its seeming ordinariness), it would appear to be some absolutely unmagical, boringly unexceptionable bit of everyday life -- it would be ignored and passed over in the search for the flamboyantly miraculous-appearing. Thus "the Secret protects itself" (as the Sufis have traditionally put it), as a function of the Seeker's ontological and epistemological blind spots; the true Secret is that there is no "secret", for everyday-reality's elements are as common as common can be, by definition, and "as plain as the nose on your face", as George Orwell would have put it. The trick is to arrange them in the right timespace pattern, with one's intent being part of that pattern. (See http://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthrea...#pid209131 for data regarding an incarnate terrestrial social memory complex specializing in teaching the design and overseeing its psychoanthropologically correct application in methodologies of expedited guided human evolution.)

Another multiview of the same point d'appui:





 Works both ways. Naked tiara-ed hot chick optional.


 Ain't technology grand?!


  O exploitable meme!
http://www.secretsinplainsight.com/#TakingMeasure


As to colouring in the world, I think that's in effect what we are already always doing at the deep quantum-mechanical level of constant co-creational cymatic vibe-hijinx-- as evidenced by our reality being just so in line with our beliefs. What a coincidence! Same portal as emblemed in the engraving, looked at from a different vantage point.

Even so, it's nice to know there's resources for those who want to sharpen their skills:
https://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/200...grown.html
https://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/201...n-ups.html
https://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/201...grown.html

 

[Dekalb_Blues]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/8-beautiful-gifs-of-space?utm_term=.ufRz01P8x#.ug7Rx0zyA



From these stars like inverted candles, from these blue awnings of the sky
There has come forth a wondrous people, that the mysteries may be revealed
-- Jalalluddin Rumi (Sufi and poet, 13th century C.E.)





  What is seen cannot be unseen!

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Source: APOD, 2016 July 31

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Both paths seem to be on offer, in conformance with the Law of Confusion; but is it just the naughty Crusaders offering poor innocent positivity-tending star-gazing B4thers a false dichotomy? Is there no limit to their deviltry?!:

 http://www.bookdepository.com/turn-left-at-orion-hundred-night-sky-objects-see-small-telescope-guy-consolmagno/9780521340908

https://www.bookdepository.com/Turn-Right-at-Orion-Mitchell-Begelman/9780738205175





  The bad guys always have the sharpest uniforms and the coolest unit insignia.





 Just another imaginative depiction of your typical everyday run-of-the-mill supergigantic-Orionic-intergalactic-alien's enigmatic intervention in Man's mundane affairs (note how the prudent Earthlings are tactically playing the making-believe-they're-out card, absolutely refusing to answer the door).

 

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Colliding Galaxies in Stephan's Quintet



Source: APOD,  2016 August 10

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Human as Spaceship

Explanation: You are a spaceship soaring through the universe. So is your dog. We all carry with us trillions of microorganisms as we go through life. These multitudes of bacteria, fungi, and archaea have different DNA than you. Collectively called your microbiome, your shipmates outnumber your own cells. Your crew members form communities, help digest food, engage in battles against intruders, and sometimes commute on a liquid superhighway from one end of your body to the other. Much of what your microbiome does, however, remains unknown. You are the captain, but being nice to your crew may allow you to explore more of your local cosmos.

Source: APOD, 2016 August 15

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[Dekalb_Blues]

re: Colliding Galaxies in Stephan's Quintet

 'Scuse me, sorry, comin' through --


Kewl visualizations of this intergalactic-bumper-cars kinda thang. As if we didn't have enough to worry about -- see 04:00 ff -- this one's got our name on it, for sure! Four billion years from now, I plan to be out of town for the duration.



No need to panic, folks, just stay calm and AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

 Milky Way, meet Andromeda!

We delicately fragile and ephemeral Earthlings are as mere mayflies in a Fujita-scale "Category V Hurricane, Catastrophic" relative to these kind of titanic proceedings! Of course, seemingly giant (to us) solar systems like ours are also comparatively pretty tiny considered against this super-duper order of magnitude, and could easily slip through the cracks and go through such a fantastic collision and all its gravitational stresses and strains without mussing its hair, so to speak. Yep, keep thinkin' that.

http://alessasadversaria.blogspot.com/20...ision.html

Allusion-friendly muzik -- because... Science!!
Note: predictably, given the pattern-manipulation-mad musician's sensitivity to provocative memes, there actually is a rock group called Stephan's Quintet.  Here's a somewhat apropos number, also appropriate for your dining and dancing pleasure in the aftermath of other annihilative world-catastrophes:




 

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[Dekalb_Blues]

  

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Aurora over Icelandic Fault



Source: APOD, 2016 August 30

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The Wide and Deep Lagoon



Source: APOD, 2016 September 9