Author Archives: Chompsky

Behold: the beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 66 in glorious detail despite being 35 million light years away. To wit:

The gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across, similar in size to the Milky Way. This reprocessed Hubble Space Telescope close-up view spans a region about 30,000 light-years wide around the galactic core. It shows the galaxy’s disk dramatically inclined to our line-of-sight. Surrounding its bright core, the likely home of a supermassive black hole, obscuring dust lanes and young, blue star clusters sweep along spiral arms dotted with the tell-tale glow of pinksh star forming regions. Messier 66, also known as NGC 3627, is the brightest of the three galaxies in the gravitationaly interacting Leo Triplet.

(Image: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & Copyright: Leo Shatz)

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Behold: the 1961 Aston Martin DB4 GT: pre-Bond, but similar in looks to its successor, the DB5. The luxurious DB4 was produced from 1958 to 1963 and its GT variant was sportier with a shorter wheelbase, lightweight aluminium panels and a more powerful 302bhp, 3.7-litre engine.

Only 75 were ever made and this vehicle is one of just 30 left hand drive models. Fully restored in 2020 and beefed up with a 4.7-litre engine, it’s expected to fetch at least €2.8 million at auction this Friday.

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You’ve seen a lunar halo before. But probably not like this. To wit:

This fairly common sight occurs when high thin clouds containing millions of tiny ice crystals cover much of the sky. Each ice crystal acts like a miniature lens. Because most of the crystals have a similar elongated hexagonal shape, light entering one crystal face and exiting through the opposing face refracts 22 degrees, which corresponds to the radius of the Moon Halo. A similar Sun Halo may be visible during the day. Exactly how ice-crystals form in clouds remains a topic of research. In the featured image taken last week from Östersund, Sweden, a complete lunar halo was captured over snowy trees and rabbit tracks.

(Image: Göran Strand)

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A 2019 short by Swiss animators Frederic Siegel and Benjamin Morard in which:

Leaving for his dream job, a satellite technician keeps solitude at bay by constantly texting with his old friends. After neglecting his duties a satellite leaves its orbit which causes the worlds network to collapse.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zSWagCyWio

With Virgin’s Hyperloop due to begin service in 2030, the company has released a teaser for the ‘experience’ wherein passengers arrive at a Hyperloop ‘portal’ (’stations’ are so 2029), enter a pre-booked vactrain pod and maglev to their jaysus destination at speeds in excess of 1000km/h.

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