Author Archives: Chompsky

Behold: the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters – proof that the longer you stare at the sky, the more insanely detailed it becomes. To wit:

 Long duration camera exposures reveal an intricate network of interwoven interstellar dust and gas that was previously invisible not only to the eye but to lower exposure images. In the featured wide and deep mosaic, the dust stands out spectacularly, with the familiar Pleaides star cluster visible as the blue patch near the top of the image. Blue is the color of the Pleiades’ most massive stars, whose distinctive light reflects from nearby fine dust. On the upper left is the Hyades star cluster surrounding the bright, orange, foreground-star Aldebaran. Red glowing emission nebula highlight the bottom of the image, including the curving vertical red ribbon known as the Eridanus Loop. The pervasive dust clouds appear typically in light brown and are dotted with unrelated stars.

(image: Hirofumi Okubo)

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Behold: Comet ATLAS C/2019 Y4 – the last reported comet discovered in 2019 by the  Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System. It’s inbound, but don’t hold your breath. To wit:

Now growing brighter in northern night skies, the comet’s pretty greenish coma is at the upper left of this telescopic skyview captured from a remotely operated observatory in New Mexico on March 18. At lower right (top image) are M81 and M82, well-known as large, gravitationally interacting galaxies. Seen through faint dust clouds above the Milky Way, the galaxy pair lies about 12 million light-years distant, toward the constellation Ursa Major. (…/) Comet ATLAS is about 9 light-minutes from Earth, still beyond the orbit of Mars. The comet’s elongated orbit is similar to orbit of the Great Comet of 1844 though, a trajectory that will return this comet to the inner Solar System in about 6,000 years. Comet ATLAS will reach a perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on May 31 inside the orbit of Mercury and may become a naked-eye comet in the coming days.

Larger view here.

(Image: Rolando Ligustri (CARA Project, CAST))

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The work of Irish visual artist Threadstories – full-face, fringed and knotted, crocheted headpieces, the notion of which she sez:

…is questioning how the erosion of personal privacy in the digital age shapes how we view and portray ourselves online. The masks deny the viewer the full story of who the sitter is, echoing the curated or false personas we view online daily. My masks are photographed against a sanitised white square. I know there is often chaos, mess and noise just beyond the margins of that photograph, but the messiness of life doesn’t make the edit for social media..

Fair enough.

More here.

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Behold: the Lazarus Mini Moke V8M – a souped up one-off modification of the boxy doorless Mini originally intended as a military vehicle but found wanting on account of its low ground clearance.

15,000 of these were made from 1964 to 1968 and French motorcycle modifier Lazarus (even they of the amphibious Moke) somehow managed to cram an insanely powerful Masarati V8 under the tiny hood of this one, adding 17 inch alloys and roll bars to provide a (completely imaginary) semblance of safety.

It could be the last car you’ll ever drive, and not in a good way.

Price on application.

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Behold: Messier 13 – the Great Globular Cluster in the constellationn of Hercules – one of the brightest in the Northern sky. To wit:

In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, “This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent.” (…/) Sharp telescopic views like this one reveal the spectacular cluster’s hundreds of thousands of stars. At a distance of 25,000 light-years, the cluster stars crowd into a region 150 light-years in diameter. Approaching the cluster core upwards of 100 stars could be contained in a cube just 3 light-years on a side. For comparison, the closest star to the Sun is over 4 light-years away. The remarkable range of brightness recorded in this image follows stars into the dense cluster core and reveals three subtle dark lanes forming the apparent shape of a propeller just below and slightly left of centre. Distant background galaxies in the medium-wide field of view include NGC 6207 at the upper left. 

Large version here.

Previous MGIFOS: Omega Centauri, NGC 6752 and NGC 7089

(Image: Eric Coles and Mel Helm)

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