Author Archives: Chompsky

As astronomers gaze up at Mars growing brighter in the night sky, approaching its 2020 opposition on October 13th, the Red Planet has been looking right back. Hey. Cut that out. To wit.

September 22: Mars’ disk is already near its maximum apparent size for earthbound telescopes, less than 1/80th the apparent diameter of a Full Moon. The seasonally shrinking south polar cap is at the bottom and hazy northern clouds are at the top. A circular, dark albedo feature, Solis Lacus (Lake of the Sun), is just below and left of disk center. Surrounded by a light area south of Valles Marineris, Solis Lacus looks like a planet-sized pupil, famously known as The Eye of Mars . Near the turn of the 20th century, astronomer and avid Mars watcher Percival Lowell associated the Eye of Mars with a conjunction of canals he charted in his drawings of the Red Planet. Broad, visible changes in the size and shape of the Eye of Mars are now understood from high resolution surface images to be due to dust transported by winds in the thin Martian atmosphere.

Any excuse.

(Image: Damian Peach)

apod

The work of Warsaw-based artist Nespoon at the Cité de la Dentelle et de la Mode, the fashion and lace museum of the city of Calais – lace capital of the world back in the late 19th century.

The artist chose her intricate motif, which dates back to 1894, from the institution’s archive before spray painting it onto the building.

colossal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTPwbVqU6lc

MetaBallStudios returns with an update of their 2015 starship size comparison adding new fantasy craft into the mix: from the tiny Hocotate ship of the Pikmin to Larry Niven’s not terribly small Ringworld.

And if you liked that, you’ll probably want to see this.

Previously: Money, Moonier, Mooniest

awesomer

‘Final Cut: Ladies And Gentlemen’ – an experimental feature-length film by Hungarian director György Pálfi that was shown at Cannes in 2012.

Using clips from 450 movies that span almost the entire history of cinema, it’s a montage, smoothly transitioning from scene to scene, perfectly echoing the  tropes of romantic movies.

It might just be the best, oddest thing you watch today.

kottke

Of the most terrifying, relentless and seemingly intractable man-made problem faced by the world today, German educational design studio Kurzgesagt sez:

We have known for decades that rapid Climate Change is being caused by the release of Greenhouse Gases. But instead of reducing them, in 2019 the world was emitting 50% more CO2 than in the year 2000. And emissions are still rising. Why is that? Why is it  so hard to just stop emitting these gases?

Previously: The Biggest Star In The Universe

Behold: ribbons of shocked interstellar gas at the outer edge of an expanding stellar explosion that would have been clearly visible to our ancestors during the late Stone Age 20,000 years ago. To wit:

The featured image was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope and is a closeup of the outer edge of a supernova remnant known as the Cygnus Loop or Veil Nebula. The filamentary shock front is moving toward the top of the frame at about 170 kilometres per second, while glowing in light emitted by atoms of excited hydrogen gas. The distances to stars thought to be interacting with the Cygnus Loop have recently been found by the Gaia mission to be about 2,400 light years distant. The whole Cygnus Loop spans six full Moons across the sky, corresponding to about 130 light years, and parts can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

(Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Blair; Acknowledgement: Leo Shatz)

apod

Behold:  the fast approaching bird of prey in your rear view mirror that is the BMW M1000RR – the first dedicated ‘M’ bike from BMW’s motorsports division, based on the already fairly nippy S1000RR.

The ‘M’, as you’d expect, denotes a fully-optimised, 212bhp track-scorching tune-up with upgraded Mahle pistons, adapted combustion chambers, increased engine compression, downforce enhancing aerodynamics, an aluminium chassis, and carbon wheels.

Skree.

hiconsumption