NGC 4590 (M68) Globular Cluster

Eclipsing Suns

I can’t remember which novel JR said influenced the world of S6, but I was recently reminded of Asimov’s Nightfall and wonder whether its eclipse narrative might have some bearing on the plot …

[Spoilers for Nightfall ahead – highly recommend you read the story (it’s short!)]

For anyone not familiar, Nightfall is set on a planet with six suns - enough suns that the planet never experiences darkness. Every 2000 years or so, the suns and the planet’s moon align just so, and an eclipse occurs. And every 2000 years, something cataclysmic occurs that ends civilization. The only records of the event are embedded in the mythology of an ancient cult’s scripture. 

During one of these cycles, a team of astronomers and psychologists collaborate with the cult, and together determine that they are weeks away from the next eclipse. The scientists lock their loved ones away in a bunker and prepare equipment to document the eclipse, which they do not believe they will survive. (Having never experienced nighttime, they have a pathological fear of the dark. Even more concerning, however, is the threat of the Stars mentioned in ancient scripture, for these have the power to burn cities and drive men to madness.)

And when the eclipse occurs and people see the night sky for the first time in two thousand years, they are struck with terror and knowledge of their insignificance, and all the world over, people set their cities on fire to blot out the stars’ truth and the horror of the long night.

… What little we do know about S6 reminds me of this. Like Clarke and co., these scientists attempt to learn what happened to a lost civilization (Eligius III) while hampered by a cult-like organization (Second Dawn? Wonkru? Whoever now inhabits the planet?) that has attached mythological meaning to the natural phenomenon of the eclipse. JR has said that something crucial happens when the suns eclipse, and though suns eclipsing themselves does not create total darkness, as here, we can guess that there will be psychological ramifications attached to it.

oh my god. apparently during the making of the Voyager golden record they had to fly the recorder by commercial airlines to add some material onto the record last minute and they booked a seat for it under the name of Mr. Equipment

on stories, leaving a mark, and wanting to be remembered

1. Jack Rackham in Black Sails s04e10 2. John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos. 3. Carl Sagan on Voyager’s Golden Record 4. Ada Limón, During the Impossible Age of Everyone. 5. Paleolithic handprints in Cueva de las Manos, Argentina 6. Sappho, If Not, Winter (translated by Anne Carson)

Hubble Observes Infant Stars in Nearby Galaxy by NASA Hubble

Book cover assignment for class, we had three short scifi stories to choose from and I chose Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall”. 🔴🌌

Gravity’s Rainbow by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

Daphnis and the Rings of Saturn : What’s happening to the rings of Saturn? A little moon making big waves. The moon is 8-kilometer Daphnis and it is making waves in the Keeler Gap of Saturn’s rings using just its gravity – as it bobs up and down, in and out. The featured image is a colored and more detailed version of a previously released images taken in 2017 by the robotic Cassini spacecraft during one of its Grand Finale orbits. Daphnis can be seen on the far right, sporting ridges likely accumulated from ring particles. Daphnis was discovered in Cassini images in 2005 and raised mounds of ring particles so high in 2009 – during Saturn’s equinox when the ring plane pointed directly at the Sun – that they cast notable shadows. via NASA

How small we are.

Scientists Stunned By a Neanderthal Hybrid Discovered in a Siberian Cave

Okay, the title of The Atlantic’s article might be a little click-bait-y. But the discovery is truly remarkable. A new bone has been analyzed from the already-famous cave in Russia, and it belonged to, per DNA analysis, the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.  

Dusty Stars Of Orion