Author Archives: Chompsky

Behold: the only running and driving example of three (maybe four) surviving 1985 F-series prototypes of the legendary Porsche 959.

Used for testing the 959’s electrical systems and weather resistance, the five speed 450bhp supercar has a ruby red paint job, a wine leather interior and a mere 26,520km on the clock.

Unlike the final production model, this vehicle (dubbed F7) lacks power steering, rear seatbacks and a passenger-side mirror, none of which will affect the price.

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Actually, no, just an aurora. But what an aurora. To wit:

Captured in 2015, this aurora was noted by Icelanders for its great brightness and quick development. The aurora resulted from a solar storm, with high energy particles bursting out from the Sun and through a crack in Earth’s protective magnetosphere a few days later. Although a spiral pattern can be discerned, creative humans might imagine the complex glow as an atmospheric apparition of any number of common icons. In the foreground of the featured image is the Ölfusá River while the lights illuminate a bridge in Selfoss City. Just beyond the low clouds is a nearly full Moon. The liveliness of the Sun — and likely the resulting auroras on Earth — is slowly increasing as the Sun emerges from a Solar minimum, a historically quiet period in its 11-year cycle.

(Image: Davide Necchi)

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Behold: the Wally Why200 – a wide-bodied 24m yacht with a vast 200 square metres of internal space – twice that of similarly long, normally proportioned übertubs.

You get a spacious lounge area, a dining room, four guest cabins, and room for a crew of five and an owner’s suite in the bow completely wrapped with panoramic glazing. Outside, there’s another 144 square metres of deck space with fold-out wings for an expansive beach club and two garages for all your water toys.

Catch it at the Ferretti Group Private Preview while you attend this year’s Monaco Yacht Show.

Price tba (not that you’re the type of vulgar cove who’d even ask).

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Behold: the BMW AMBY concept – a crossover e-bike and e-motorbike that debuted at the Munich Motor Show last week. Available in two genre-bending versions: the bike-like ‘BMW i Vision AMBY’ and the more motorcycle-like ‘BMW Motorrad Vision AMBY,’. The i Vision has a lightweight aluminium frame, full-suspension, belt-driven pedal-assist, 186 miles of range and all manner of recycled components, plus the ability to use rapeseed oil as brake fluid.

The Motorrad Vision is basically an all-electric dirtbike on chunky enduro tires. 

Both share a modular drivetrain with an adjustable top speed. Capped at 24km/h  on paths, 45km/h  on urban roads and 60km/h in the wild.

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Behold: M16, aka, the Eagle nebula – just two million years old and surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas. To wit:

This beautifully detailed image of the region adopts the colourful Hubble palette and includes cosmic sculptures made famous in Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the star-forming complex. Described as elephant trunks or Pillars of Creation, dense, dusty columns rising near the centre are light-years in length but are gravitationally contracting to form stars. Energetic radiation from the cluster stars erodes material near the tips, eventually exposing the embedded new stars. Extending from the ridge of bright emission left of centre is another dusty star-forming column known as the Fairy of Eagle Nebula. M16 lies about 7,000 light-years away, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).

(Image: Martin Pugh)

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Behold: what looks like but isn’t  the Hubble Space Telescope’s latest view of a distant galactic nebula. Something much closer to home. To wit:

…this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled early morning spacecoast skygazers on August 29. The snapshot was taken at 3:17am from Space View Park in Titusville, Florida. That’s about 3 minutes after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the CRS-23 mission to resupply the International Space Station. It captures drifting plumes and exhaust from the separated first and second stage of the rocket rising through still dark skies. The lower bright dot is the second stage continuing on to low Earth orbit. The upper one is the rocket’s first stage performing a boostback burn. Of course the first stage booster returned to make the first landing on the latest autonomous drone ship to arrive in the Atlantic, A Short Fall of Gravitas.

(Image: Dennis Huff)

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Behold: the BMW CE-02 – a lightweight concept electric motorbike/scooter with a 90km/h top speed and 90km of range on a full charge.

Sleek and simple, like the CE-04 production model, the CE-02 has quad-LED headlights, a translucent dual LED taillight, an underslung rack that can carry a skateboard (and use it as a footrest), a single-sided swing-arm, off-set mono-shock,  scrambler-style seat, colour display and 40cm disc wheels front and back.

See it (briefly) in action here.

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Behold: M51, aka the Whirlpool galaxy – a twofer in the constellation of the Hunting Dogs. ‘Where’s that?’, sez you. To wit:

Find the Big Dipper and follow the handle away from the dipper’s bowl until you get to the last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you’ll come upon this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier’s famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (top), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. Though M51 looks faint and fuzzy to the eye, deep images like this one reveal its striking colours and galactic tidal debris.

(Image: Josep Drudis)

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