serenablakeoffice

Latest Posts by serenablakeoffice

George Palmer Putnam paused at the airport long enough to tell reporters of his offer of a $2,000 reward for information of his missing wife, Amelia Earhart, July 29, 1937. She, her navigator, and her plane were believed to be somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The money is directed particularly at Japanese fishermen.

Photo: Associated Press

On Sunday I got a copy of the Silent Patient from Shakespeare & Co. Despite it being incredibly touristic I actually really love coming here! People rarely spend a lot of time upstairs, so it’s always so nice to use the reading spaces to go through a quick poetry book or to do some journaling :-)

monday morning 🥀

🎧 listen to my new ambient mix

World's oldest persevered wedding cake, baked in 1898 Victorian England

After surviving six monarchs and lasting through two different millennia, the cake bears the scars of time. In 1940, during the Second World War, the town of Basingstoke was bombed. The town center, in which the bakery was located, was hit by a bomb in August of that year. This impact caused a great deal of damage, and yet the seemingly fragile wedding cake, already approaching half a century old at the time, sustained but a single crack. This crack remains the cake’s single imperfection, but for the discoloration that has come with age and sugar seeping from the rich cake into the previously white icing.

(Source)

Telescope Dome, Mt. Wilson Observatory, Angeles National Forest, California, 2023.

The beginnings of "big science" and the evolution of astronomy as more than speculative star gazing are both encapsulated in this structure. Its telescopes are now obsolete for most kinds of optical observations in the visible spectrum as larger mirrors and locations far from urban light pollution make other observatories more useful for those. Mt. Wilson Observatory is still used for some other types of astronomical explorations. Amazing that only a little more than a century old, the observatory saw the known universe expand from a single galaxy to one of countless galaxies spread over billions of light years even as the number of planets known to orbit around stars has grown exponentially. Mt. Wilson's telescopes and the early astronomers who worked there laid the groundwork for all of the magnificent facilities now available to astronomy and astrophysics and for the discoveries they are making. Not least of those is the Webb Telescope in space 1.5 million + km from earth.

Spread your cosmic wings 🦋

The Butterfly Nebula, created by a dying star, was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in this spectacular image. Observations were taken over a more complete spectrum of light, helping researchers better understand the “wings'' of gas bursting out from its center. The nebula’s dying central star has become exceptionally hot, shining ultraviolet light brightly over the butterfly’s wings and causing the gas to glow.

Learn more about Hubble’s celebration of Nebula November and see new nebula images, here.

You can also keep up with Hubble on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Flickr!

Image credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT)

This is how the James Web telescope works

Sturgeon Full Moon l Erik Contreras

The Large Magellanic Cloud

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is nearly 200,000 light years from earth. The picture above shows how it consists of vast clouds of dust and gas most likely from old stars going supernova. It is a stellar nursery for stars, similar to a nebula.

Close to this is the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and it is largely believed that their irregular shape is due to a collision that occurred between them thousands of years ago.

A prominent feature of the LMC is the Tarantula nebula (which the James Webb telescope recently took a high res photo of).

Sadly, those in the Northern Hemisphere never get the chance to see the LMC - it is only visible in the Southern Hemisphere!

Switzerland’s oldest library, Abbey Library St.Gallen (x)

Spring at the golden gate pavilion.

Saitama, Japan.

Huế, Vietnam. Credit to _im.rot_ (Instagram).

Cathedral of Lausanne, Switzerland. Personal photos.

Huế, Vietnam. Credit to Dong Ho Vy.

‘Forgotten library’

Francis Meslet Art

Books & Nooks It rained yesterday, which never happens at this time of the year in California. Made me feel all cozy~

And of course it’s raining on the inside… where the books are…

Why can’t my local library be literally magic ;_;

l lulumoonowlbooks (x)

Leaving London for a week–– I always miss the city, looking forward to being back already (and who can blame me, just look at this light in the library)

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of a Library.” -Jorge Luis Borges ♡

Time Traveler ⏳

Kowloon: The Walled City

3-D book - 1830

The Ksar Draa in Timimoun, Algeria, is an ancient ruin that stands out in the middle of an ocean of dunes, and it's history has been lost over the centuries. The only news related to it is that for a certain period of time it was occupied by the Jews of the Timimoun region

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