07-27-2017, 07:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-30-2017, 03:22 PM by Dekalb_Blues.)
(05-13-2017, 05:11 PM)Nía Wrote: New View of the Crab Nebula
[Colorful -- and new!! -- view of big ol' crabby-nebulosity 'way out yonder, aloft in the aether]
Source: NASA Image of the Day, 2017 May 13
"The Crab Nebula is the in the Northern Hemisphere and is one of the most important and interesting objects in the sky.
[. . . T]he filaments of the Crab Nebula are the [. . .] remains of a star destroyed in an enormous explosion. [. . .]
On July 4, 1054, astronomers in China and Japan were startled by the arrival of a 'guest star' near the lunar mansions
Tsui and Shen (which correspond to the Western constellation of Taurus). Of course the actual explosion had occurred
6,500 years earlier, around 5500 B.C., because the Crab Nebula is 6,500 light-years away. Despite its considerable distance,
the dying star was bright enough to be seen by day for a while in 1054. Nonetheless, its sighting was not recorded by
European stargazers. This is quite surprising, given that the appearance of Halley's Comet, twelve years later, was woven
into the famous Bayeux Tapestry.
"For a few seconds during the course of its explosion, the conditions in the core of the star were so extreme that chemical
elements heavier than iron were created. It is in such explosions that almost all the heavy elements are forged from the
otherwise lightweight components of a star. The presence of traces of copper, tin, mercury, and gold and large amounts
of iron in the crust of the Earth reveals that the ingredients of the solar system were stirred and enriched by supernova
explosions such as this long before the Sun and its retinue of planets appeared almost five billion years ago. Ashes change
to gold, and dust to iron and copper, but not on Earth. The forces that drive this transmutation are difficult to imagine,
but without them there could be no imagining." [latter italics added for emphasis]
---- from David Malin, The Invisible Universe (NY: Bullfinch Press/Little, Brown, 1999
"When Joni Mitchell, in her song 'Woodstock,' sang, 'We are stardust..." [not to mention "we are golden"!] she was being
factual as well as poetic. Every element on earth, except for the lightest, was created in the heart of some massive star.
And the heaviest elements -- such as gold, lead, and uranium -- were produced in a supernova explosion during the cata-
clysmic end of a huge star's life, says Louisiana State University physicist Edward Zganjar."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/19...080416.htm
"I had been attempting to label this grand idea of interconnectedness as either positive or negative. I eventually realized
that I was approaching the idea in a way that was too narrow-minded. This is not an either/or situation. . . . [W]e are at
the same time lovely and doomed by the fact that we are all joined together so inherently."
http://blogs.cofc.edu/whitman/2010/11/03...onnection/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/astrono...erter.html
Was it a dream? ---- that crowded concert-room
In Bath; that sea of ruffles and laced coats;
And William Herschel, in his powdered wig,
Waiting upon the platform, to conduct
His choir and Linley's orchestra? He stood
Tapping his music-rest, lost in his own thoughts
And (did I hear or dream them?) all were mine:
[. . . .]
Round me the music throbs
With an immortal passion. I grow aware
Of an appalling mystery. . . . We, this throng
Of midgets, playing, listening, tense and still,
Are sailing on a midget ball of dust
We call our planet; will have sailed through space
Ten thousand leagues before this music ends.
What does it mean? O, God, what can it mean? ----
This weird hushed ant-hill with a thousand eyes;
These midget periwigs; all those little blurs,
Tier over tier, of faces, masks of flesh,
Corruptible, hiding each its hopes and dreams,
In tragi-comic dreams.
And all this throng
Will be forgotten, mixed with dust, crushed out,
Before this book of music is outworn
Or that tall organ crumbles. Violins
Outlast their players. Other hands may touch
That harpsichord; but ere this planet makes
Another threescore journeys round its sun,
These breathing listeners will have vanished.
Whither?
I watch my moving hands, and they grow strange!
What is it moves this body? What am I?
How came I here, a ghost, to hear that voice
Of infinite compassion, far away,
Above the throbbing strings, hark! Comfort ye . . .
If music lead us to a cry like this,
I think I shall not lose it in the skies.
I do but follow its own secret law
As long ago I sought to understand
Its golden mathematics; taught myself
The way to lay one stone upon another,
Before I dared to dream that I might build
My Holy City of Song. I gave myself
To all its branches. How they stared at me,
Those men of "sensibility," when I said
That algebra, conic sections, fluxions, all
Pertained to music. Let them stare again.
Old Kepler knew, by instinct, what I now
Desire to learn. I have resolved to leave
No tract of heaven unvisited.
To-night,
-- The music carries me back to it again! --
I see beyond this island universe,
Beyond our sun, and all those other suns
That throng the Milky Way, far, far, beyond,
A thousand little wisps, faint nebulae,
Luminous fans and milky streaks of fire;
Some like soft brushes of electric mist
Streaming from one bright point; others that spread
And branch, like growing systems, others discrete,
Keen, ripe, with stars in clusters; others drawn back
By central forces into one dense death,
Thence to be kindled into fire, reborn,
And scattered abroad once more in a delicate spray
Faint as the mist by one bright dewdrop breathed
At dawn, and yet a universe like our own;
Each wisp a universe, a vast galaxy
Wide as our night of stars.
The Milky Way
In which our sun is drowned, to these would seem
Less than to us their faintest drift of haze;
Yet we, who are borne on one dark grain of dust
Around one indistinguishable spark
Of star-mist, lost in one feather of light,
Can by the strength of our own thought, ascend
Through universe after universe; trace their growth
Through boundless time, their glory, their decay;
And, on the invisible road of law, more firm
Than granite, range through all their length and breadth,
Their height and depth, past, present, and to come.
So, those who follow the great Workmaster's law
From small things up to great, may one day learn
The structure of the heavens, discern the whole
Within the part, as men through Love see God.
Oh, holy night, deep night of stars, whose peace
Descends upon the troubled mind like dew,
Healing it with the sense of that pure reign
Of constant law, enduring through all change;
Shall I not, one day, after faithful years,
Find that thy heavens are built on music, too,
And hear, once more, above thy throbbing worlds,
This voice of all compassion, Comfort ye, --
Yes -- comfort ye, my people, saith your God ?
---- from Alfred Noyes, The Torch-Bearers: Vol. I, The Watchers of the Skies (Edinburgh & London: 1922), "William Herschel Conducts"
http://archive.org/details/torchbearers00noyeuoft
[for context see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Noyes (sub-heading 6: The Torch-Bearers)]
One night during the wee hours I watched in awe as the waxing moon rode splendidly across the zenith of the heavens like a
glorious silver chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space, wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever
festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I gazed wonderingly at all this, the thought occurred to me: I really must patch that
big hole in the outhouse roof.