NGC 7822, Stars And Dust In Cepheus

This evening I assembled a piece of really cheap, shitty furniture with nothing but my equally cheap and shitty leatherman. I took this time to take my shirt off and complete a task while I was fully in my body and focused. As I crouched over to fasten screws into the piece, I was very conscious of how my stomach had rolls when I bent over, and how my hips bulged out a bit from my pants when I leaned. I usually feel pretty grossed out by how my body looks and behaves in these situations, how characteristically feminine and soft is appears, but I made myself sit with it this time. I wanted to reach for my shirt to cover my body up but I didn’t. For three hours, I bent over, drove screws into metal, and watched as my (soft, lumpy) body completed the task. I grew more and more content with the body performing the work as the project came together. When I was finished I felt so confident and pleased with the new addition to my apartment that I hung out with my shirt off for the rest of the night. 

This is an example of an approach to a dysphoric moment that, rather than hiding or disguising my body, highlights my body’s existing capabilities and its inherent good. This method does nothing to create the illusion that my body is somehow different than what it really is. Essentially, this strategy is the opposite of that utilized through binders/packers/etc., devices that attempt to alter the appearance of the body, and thus the experience of being in that body, to relieve dysphoria. I distracted myself from my discomfort with a task that required a lot of concentration (those instructions were also shit, lol), and I became more familiar with how my body looked and felt over the course of a few hours. The familiarity somewhat desensitized me from the feelings of revulsion I typically feel toward my body. 

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken many spectacular pictures over the years, but this is one of its most well known images. It shows about 10,000 galaxies, some of which are nearly as old as the universe itself.

Image Credit: NASA

i know this is a hard to swallow pill but patriarchy does not care why you perform femininity, who you perform it for, or how you feel about it

Top 10 Largest Moons In The Solar System: Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, Moon, Europa, Triton, Titania, Rhea & Oberon.

Image credit: Kevin Gill /Joseph Brimacombe /Stuart Rankin

Brides in Bowties: Wedding Fashion Gallery

NGC 4622 The Backwards Galaxy

Standard theory holds that spiral galaxies generally have arms that trail behind the spin of the galaxy, rather like a Catherine wheel firework.

Then there is NGC 4622 which doesn’t, with arms that seem to lead rather than trail the spiral rotation.

Modelling suggests it’s most likely the outcome of an impact, but still remains a matter of conjecture and interest by astronomers.

The galaxy is located in the Southern Sky, in the constellation of Centauri and is 111 million light years from us.

Starlink Mission by Official SpaceX Photos

I firmly believe that how feminist a book is is better demonstrated by its background characters rather than its mains

Magnetic monster NGC 1275

This stunning image of NGC 1275 was taken using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in July and August 2006. It provides amazing detail and resolution of the fragile filamentary structures, which show up as a reddish lacy structure surrounding the central bright galaxy NGC 1275. These filaments are cool despite being surrounded by gas that is around 55 million degrees Celsius hot. They are suspended in a magnetic field which maintains their structure and demonstrates how energy from the central black hole is transferred to the surrounding gas.

By observing the filamentary structure, astronomers were, for the first time, able to estimate the magnetic field’s strength. Using this information they demonstrated how the extragalactic magnetic fields have maintained the structure of the filaments against collapse caused by either gravitational forces or the violence of the surrounding cluster during their 100-million-year lifetime.

This is the first time astronomers have been able to differentiate the individual threads making up such filaments to this degree. Astonishingly, they distinguished threads a mere 200 light-years across. By contrast, the filaments seen here can be a gaping 200 000 light-years long. The entire image is approximately 260 000 light-years across.

Also seen in the image are impressive lanes of dust from a separate spiral galaxy. It  lies partly in front of the giant elliptical central cluster galaxy and has been completed disrupted by the tidal gravitational forces within the galaxy cluster. Several striking filaments of blue newborn stars are seen crossing the image.

Credit:

NASA, ESA and Andy Fabian (University of Cambridge, UK)

Booster Test for Future Space Launch System Flights via NASA https://ift.tt/3hP00j4