You’ll recall yesterday’s astropic of the Ring nebula. Well, M57 is a lot more complicated than it appears when you break out the big lens. To wit:

The easily visible central ring is about one light-year across, but this remarkably deep exposure – a collaborative effort combining data from three different large telescopes – explores the looping filaments of glowing gas extending much farther from the nebula‘s central star. This composite image includes red light emitted by hydrogen as well as visible and infrared light. The Ring Nebula is an elongated planetary nebula, a type of nebula created when a Sun-like star evolves to throw off its outer atmosphere to become a white dwarf star. The Ring Nebula is about 2,500 light-years away toward the musical constellation Lyra.

(Image: Hubble, Large Binocular Telescope, Subaru Telescope; Composition & Copyright: Robert Gendler)

apod

This morning.

Melbourne, Australia.

Despite rising covid cases, Victoria premier Daniel Andrews (top) defends Melbourne’s current lockdown – which includes the closure of shops, restaurants, cinemas and playgrounds, and stay-at-home restrictions – now into its 200th day.

Victoria Covid update: Daniel Andrews insists lockdown is working despite daily cases rising to 57 (The Guardian)

Moxie – The Place Above

You should be dancing.

Irish trad ensemble Moxie will get your toes tapping with this infectious pop/soul number from their new album The Dawn Of Motion out on September 3.

Moxie are Darren Roche (accordion); Jos Kelly (accordion, keyboards); Cillian Doheny (banjo, guitar); Ted Kelly (banjo, tenor guitars); Josh Sampson (drums) and Julia Spanu (a French vocalist/songwriter with Vietnamese/Italian roots).

Moxie play Friday 3 September, Doolin Hotel, Co Clare; Saturday 4 Sept, Claremorris Folk Festival, Co Mayo; Friday 17 Sept, Meet Me In The Garden, Birr, Co Offaly; Tuesday 21 Sept, Monroes, Galway; and Sunday 26 Sept, Andersons Live, Sligo.

Nick says: Moxie music.

Moxie

This morning.

Grafton Street, Dublin 2.

Model Bex Fleetwood and her son Leo celebrate the opening of The Christmas Shop in Brown Thomas. Shops are now also open in the store’s Cork, Limerick and Galway branches with luxurious decorations, Christmas trees, lights, stockings, wreaths, crackers and garlands on offer. And why not.

Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland

This morning.

Via Irish Times:

When The Irish Times invited people not taking the Covid-19 vaccine to explain their reasons, we received more than 250 responses inside two days…

…These readers’ statements are analysed by two doctors: Dr Anne Moore, vaccinologist at University College Cork; and Dr Eoghan de Barra, consultant in infectious diseases at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital and senior lecturer in the Department of International Health and Tropical Medicines at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland….

Why we’re not getting the Covid-19 vaccine: Irish Times readers share their reasons (Irish Times)

Meanwhile…

‘…We see the duty of care most possess for others play out in mask wearing too: a practice that offers little protection to the wearer, but is designed for the collective benefit of everyone around.

Compliance with mask wearing in Ireland has remained high, according to research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). And even as mandatory mask wearing in the UK ends, they still remain ubiquitous on public transport and in supermarkets. It seems the message that we wear masks for each other’s benefit was not a hard one to grasp.

And though the government can issue mask-wearing directives all it likes, it cannot easily engender a sense of comity that sees people continue to wear them even when they do not have to. A roster of rules backed by the threat of sanctions can get us some of the way there, but it seems at the core of all of this is a shared ethical standpoint. That is something no cabinet could ever legislate for…’

Good grief.

Covid crisis could result in a shared ethical stance (Finn McRedmond, Irish Times)

New EU energy labels for light bulbs will apply from September 1

Confused?

Helen O’Dwyer, of Solus, writes:

A brand-new version of the widely-recognised EU energy label for light bulbs and light sources will be applicable in all shops and online retailers from September 1st  with an 18-month transition period for products already on the market.

The most important change is a return to a simple A-G scale on energy labels because more and more products are now achieving ratings as A, A+ or A++ according to the current scale causing confusion for consumers.  [Solus webinar on the changes here]

The new energy label will leave empty energy efficiency classes at the top of the scale for advancing technologies and to encourage manufacturers to develop more energy efficient products…

Solus

This morning.

Via Irish Times

Government sources said it was normal practice that a line Minister would attend the subcommittee when issues relevant to their sector were being considered, and that Ms Martin may attend in this context next week.

The Event Industry Alliance had called on the Government earlier on Thursday to allow Ms Martin sit on the subcommittee, after it expressed disappointment over the lack of progress in deciding a date for the return of live events.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, spokesman Dan McDonnell said: “We do feel sorry for Catherine Martin and the position she is in, but it’s just not good enough from our point of view. We were deeply disappointed about how it was left yesterday and the short of it is that there is no progress being made.”

Request from Catherine Martin to attend Cabinet subcommittee meeting rejected (Irish Times)

Govt promises ‘clear roadmap’ for events by end of month (RTÉ)

Kevin Barry and Cork City

This morning.

Writer Kevin Barry on Cork in the current issue of Granta:

If cities are sexed, as Jan Morris believes, then Cork is a male place. Personified further, I would cast him as low-sized, disputatious and stoutly built, a hard-to-knock-over type. He has a haughty demeanour that’s perhaps not entirely earned but he can also, in a kinder light, seem princely.

He is certainly melancholic. He is given to surreal flights and to an antic humour and he is blessed with pleasingly musical speech patterns. He is careful with money. He is in most leanings a liberal. He is fairly cool, usually quite relaxed, and head over heels in love with himself….

….There is a sense when you’re in Cork that the rest of the world is receding. Oh it’s still out there, somewhere, in the noiseless distance, but after a while it fades from view, and it has no more than the wispy quality of a rumour. When you walk across Patrick’s Bridge and the north side of the city lofts itself handsomely into being before you, it is hard to shake the sensation that you’re at the centre of the universe.”

Otis Blue writes:

All that and the U20 All-Ireland hurling title too!

FIGHT!

The Raingod’s Green, Dark as Passion (Kevin Barry, Granta)

Yesterday.

Ex-Waterford United player Roy Butler dies aged 23 (RTÉ)

Ireland to cease deliveries of AZ, Janssen vaccines – Reid (RTÉ)

COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen: EMA finds possible link to very rare cases of unusual blood clots with low blood platelets (EMA)

Update:

Update:

Broadsheet.ie