Saturday, December 31, 2016

It's Origin and Purpose is Still a Mystery



I've linked to this in the past, but it is worth linking again since it came up in my feeds: A massive look at 2001: A Space Odyssey (including the script) at Cinephile.

Deep in the Red



Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day takes a familiar telescopic sight (Messier 20, The Trifid Nebula) and pushes our view into the infrared. There's a lot more out there than our naked eye can see!

Friday, December 30, 2016

Only Occasionally the Dark Side



There really is no dark side of the Moon. At least, not all the time. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the lunar farside, of which we can only see glimpses as the Moon "nods" in orbit around us. Another image from the hard-working (and mostly forgotten by us) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Bubbles



Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows expanding shells of gas around young stars in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Oh, for a sight of those southern skies on a dark isolated island in the Pacific!

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Monday, December 26, 2016

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Neigh



Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows a elusive (for my skies) object in the nebula found in and around Orion: The Horsehead Nebula.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Foxes Have Dens and Birds Have Nests



Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows NGC 2264, a diffuse nebula in the constellation of Monoceros. The area is popularly known as the Fox Fur, Unicorn and Christmas Tree Nebula.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Sunday, December 11, 2016

The Weight of the Nation



You ever notice how the "kit" carried by a soldier never seems to shrink?

Newer Waves



An interesting article on Stanislaw Lem and, by extension, the "New Wave". Do certain segments of Genre embrace the New Wave as wrongly as other segments of Genre are accused of embracing the Golden Age? Perhaps both sides need to look beyond these "singularity points" in our reading?

And in other news, a bit from one film version of Solaris. Bruegel, Tarkovsky, Bach.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Quality Issues



A shrinking budget, an aging and shrinking workforce, management issues and inattention probably aren't a good things when your product is a launch vehicle.

First Mission



The first crewed mission for NASA's Orion sounds interesting and finally gets us away from Low Earth Orbit, but why does it always seem to me that the planned date keeps creeping into the future?