Lebanon, Tennessee. I’m here at Confinement VI, where Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, is Guest of Honor. So I just had a cup of something not completely unlike coffee from the room coffee maker. Eleven hours driving yesterday to get here, which left me too knackered to even go to dinner. But I’m here now, and it’s time for another week of space and astronomical photographs.
To start with, let’s get a bit of history;
According to rumor, Gagarin was actually the first man in space who lived — which would mean he got into the capsule knowing it had killed previous cosmonauts. Not unusual for a test pilot, but worth recognizing.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been observing the Andromeda galaxy for years, and NASA just released this mosaic of images collected over that time. Notice the edges — those give you an idea of the size of the individual images they assembled.
Above a certain size, planets and asteroids are pulled by gravity into roughly spherical shapes. Below that size, they aren’t.
Jupiter is just endlessly interesting, and spectacular. I’ve seen pictures of individual lightning storms from Juno, the orbiting eye. Now this:
You have to figure there’s as much lightning going on in the sunlit side clouds. The thunder must be astonishing.
Don Pettit continues to take amazing pictures from the ISS. This is obviously a longer exposure.
Julio Maiz has a spectacular Lagoon Nebula this week.
The Sun continues in its excitable ways, giving spectacular aurorae shows. If you like that sort of thing.
Which I do, obviously.
Another galaxy. This one is sort of blousy and less organized, at least in this shot. Sort of the way I feel after that drive.
Also for our VIPs: Sky Candy — What a Relief
A lot of times, the names of nebulae seem a little strained, especially when they were first named before the sort of images we get from JWST and Hubble. This one not so much.
This isn’t as spectacular as some space images, but it’s interesting. APOD explains it.
A postcard from Mars.
This is an image of an exoplanet. This is an artist’s (or AI’s) rendition, but wouldn’t that be spectacular?
I’m going to close this week with a picture from Mars the South Pole. People can survive in amazing environments.
Lingering moonlight at the @NSF Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station illuminates the flags of the 12 original signatory nations to the Antarctic Treaty; aurora australis ripples overhead, with Scorpius at top right. Current temperature: -61°C, feels like -77°C; pic Danny Hampton pic.twitter.com/6s7WSUpX93
— The Antarctic Report (@AntarcticReport) June 11, 2020
If things go well, the eighth Starship test flight will be today. Fingers crossed. As always, I hope you like the sky candy, and I love the comments.
