Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
I’ve taken a momentary detour from Amaranthe to Thedas - I’m playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I don’t spend nearly as much time playing video games as I used to; writing is a full-time job, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I’ll always play a Bioware game (admittedly, Baldur’s Gate 3 got me this year, too - it was incredible, in all the best Bioware-style ways).
Anyway, Veilguard is an absolutely gorgeous game!
Comet Tsuchinshan Atlas (A3), captured by talented astrophotographer “Astrofalls.” I tried to get a far, FAR inferior picture of the comet the last two nights, but fall and the overcast weather it brings have finally descended upon Coeur d’Alene.
In an absolutely incredible feat of engineering, SpaceX has caught Starship's Super Heavy booster in the Mechazilla arms on the first try! What a sight.
After a succesful launch and orbit, Starship itself completed a planned soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean as well. All in all, a hugely successful 5th test flight of Starship.
One day soon, this will all be routine. Like we do now with the hundreds of Falcon 9 launches and booster landings, we'll go, "Oh, did Starship launch again today? Another moon trip, maybe?" And I look forward to that day.
But for now, WOW.
It was quite a week for aurora watching in the U.S. (and in many other parts of the world, I believe). The first wave hit here at my house Monday night, and I was so ecstatic to get to see them in person for the first time in my life! I stood in my front yard and took a couple of really terrible photos that I won’t share here, because….
A stronger solar flare let loose later in the week, and Thursday night was a show for the ages. Family and friends back home in Georgia even got to see them. I’d done a bit of reading on how to take better pictures, but honestly, they were so much stronger and more dramatic, I didn’t have to do much work.
These are still horribly amateurish photos, taken with my phone without a tripod, but they’re mine. :D
Did you get to see the northern lights this week? I’d love to see any pictures you took!
Here, have 3 gorgeous aurorae - and 1 Milky Way - by Larryn Rae. Originals here: https://x.com/shadowanshadenz/status/1835141576311685254. Check out his X feed for one stunning photo after another.
Wait, this is not Montana...is it? I mean, there ARE mountains. But why is there a lake? And far less wood paneling? A thread in which I answer these questions and more.
Tl;dr: We've moved down the road to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho! (If you subscribe to my Buy Me A Coffee program and watch my livestreams, you already know this, but it’s new info for the rest of you).
The rest of the story: Actually, we moved a year ago. But we were camping out in an apartment while we built a house, and that was just so very uninteresting, I didn't mention it. But now things are exciting again.
First, why the move? A couple of reasons, but to encapsulate them, a beautiful view does not a life make (who knew?).
While wandering the woods was lovely, after a while I chafed against the isolation and lack of access to the trappings of modern life. #MrJennsen sucks at early retirement and, after two years chopping trees while wearing flannel , decided he was bored and wanted to get back in the engineering game. A series of frustrations when too much snow and impassable roads kept me from getting to the (distant) airport to travel for some family medical emergencies brought the problems into sharp relief.
Luckily, just a few hours down the road existed the equally lovely (if less wild) city of Coeur d'Alene. It, too, has mountains, rivers and lakes (Lake CDA is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen). But guess what it also has? Coffee shops and boutiques and theaters and a Best Buy and, well, people!
So here we are.
Now for a tour of the pictures!
1) My working space. The desk is a motorized standing desk, so I don't turn into a sloth while writing. No blinds? It's okay, they're getting installed tomorrow. That banner is just ridiculous, isn't it? #MrJennsen insisted on hanging it there. Swearz.
2) What I see when I'm *standing* at my desk. Gaming, comics, collectibles, science/space books, duplicates of some scifi books and, in the bottom right corner, a bit of a TBR stack. (Note: the rest of the scifi books will be going in the library - more on that soonish.)
3) The view out the window by my desk.
4) The bookcases on one wall of the main living room. I made a solar system out of my solar system glasses. :) (Close one, thermostat nemesis, but no dice! )
5 & 6) The view about 15 minutes down the road. I think it speaks for itself.
7) The patron saint of our home. Wherever Alex and Caleb live (in books), Akeso watches over.
Is this a good move? No, it's a WONDERFUL move. I have a feeling we'll stay this time.
The “Astronomy Photographer of the Year” competition never fails to impress, and this year is definitely no exception. Check out these 12 jaw-droppingly beautiful photographs of space wonders near and far: https://www.universetoday.com/168457/and-the-winner-is-astronomy-photographers-of-the-year-2024-announced/
The latest from the Webb Telescope:
“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. Webb’s powerful infrared gaze produced this detailed image of the Cartwheel and two smaller companion galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies. This image provides a new view of how the Cartwheel Galaxy has changed over billions of years.”
https://www.nasa.gov/universe/webb-captures-stellar-gymnastics-in-the-cartwheel-galaxy/
Note: There are 3 versions of the image. The composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the MIRI-only image are shown in the article, and the NIRI-only image is shown below and in this NASA tweet.
It’s your periodic Cassini Appreciation Post (no, Cassi, it’s not about you!).
From Jason Major: “Here's a view of Saturn's rings made from images captured with Cassini on July 4, 2008. Prometheus is visible inside the F ring at the bottom; the even smaller Atlas is on the left along the outer edge of the A ring. Saturn's shadow falls across the rings at upper right.”
Starship's fourth test flight went so beautifully! As before, it cruised around the planet for around 40 minutes. This time, the SuperHeavy booster not only survived re-entry, but completed its landing burn and a soft splashdown in the ocean, intact.
And the big news: the ship survived re-entry through the atmosphere, completed its flip and landing burn and splashed down as well. Now, the trip down was spicy AF, and it landed beat up, with the landing flaps hanging on by a thread. But it made it, which is *more* than SpaceX was expecting today (the focus was on making it through the atmosphere without, well, exploding).
Every test has achieved so much more than the last; the iteration SpaceX is able to achieve is incredible.
Check out this incredible image of the solar flare that caused* our aurora party last weekend!
*Okay, technically this is not the exact flare that triggered the auroras, but it was captured in the same time frame from the same region. :)
Via APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240515.html
“Pictured, a large multi-pronged solar prominence was captured extending from chaotic sunspot region AR 3664 out into space, just one example of the particle clouds ejected from this violent solar region. The Earth could easily fit under this long-extended prominence.”
I was so jealous of the people who grabbed a spot beneath totality; the videos were incredible. I’m definitely visiting my old residence of Colorado Springs in 21 years when the next one comes around!
Here’s a couple of my favorite pictures from the eclipse (though there were so many).
Credit:
Image 1: Joshua Intini (https://twitter.com/Intini_WX/status/1777428414560932136)
Image 2: Erik Kuna (https://twitter.com/SuperclusterHQ/status/1777504797890854927)
Image 3: Peter Forister (https://twitter.com/forecaster25/status/1777434179136819497)
Image 4: NASA (ISS) (https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/1777822160087818714)
Welcome to the future of spaceflight, everyone! This week, in its third test flight, Starship made it to space, oribiting the planet for around 40 minutes before heading home. No, it didn’t make it all the way to a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, but that’s what testing is for, and it traveled so much farther, for so much longer, than ever before. I was a little twitchy after the second explosive test, but I’m now very optimistic for the future of this spacecraft and what it means for our journey to the moon, then onward to Mars and throughout the solar system.
Now enjoy these absolutely stunning photos of the flight:
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning new series of near- and mid-infrared images that depict 19 nearby spiral galaxies in vivid detail.
The achievement provides a level of clarity and detail in the new imagery that offers astronomers unprecedented insights into the structure and dynamics of this group of celestial bodies.
Read much more about these images here: https://thedebrief.org/james-webb-space-telescope-captures-amazing-new-images-of-19-distant-spiral-galaxies/. And download high res versions of your favorite galaxies from the mosaic on Webb’s Flikr page.
On December 30, NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for the better part of a decade, made its closest flyby of Io, the innermost moon in the Jovian system.
The spacecraft came to within 930 miles (1,500 km) of the surface of Io, a dense moon that is the fourth largest in the Solar System. Unlike a lot of moons around Jupiter and Saturn, which have surface ice or subsurface water, Io is a very dry world. It is also extremely geologically active. Io has more than 400 active volcanoes and is therefore an object of great interest to astronomers and planetary scientists.
Read more about the flyby here.
Incredible photo by John Kraus of this week’s Falcon Heavy launch of Space Force’s X-37B spaceplane.
What life might be thriving here, one wonders?
The photograph comes from a group that calls itself the Association of Widefield Astrophotographers, and the photo was a 100-hour project by six participants in the United States, Poland, and the United Kingdom. They collected data over several months to produce the image.
According to the organization, "Our goal with this project was to prove that very expensive equipment and dark skies aren’t required to create unique images of faint objects. Since most of us are high schoolers and college students with a passion for astronomy, our summer jobs did not allow us to afford the expensive gear used by most astrophotographers."
Learn more here.
Isn’t this just an astonishing image? We thought we knew Cassiopeia A, but we were wrong.
“Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) view of Cas A displays a very violent explosion at a resolution previously unreachable at these wavelengths. This high-resolution look unveils intricate details of the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded.” Learn much more about the image and the history of our study of Cas A, go here: https://esawebb.org/news/weic2330/
I came upon this piece by Moody Blue on Deviant Art this morning. It is an almost perfect visualization of the Lake Lasai setting in Medusa Falling, as Marlee describes it. (I tried to create the scene in Midjourney but was never happy with the results - but this is it.)
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/.../MoodyBlue-Stock-108-997750857
