Happy 29th Birthday to Hubble
Hubble Celebrates its 29th Birthday with Unrivaled View of the Southern Crab Nebula: https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1907/
😲😍💖✨
Starshine Hardbacks
The next-to-last shipment of signed Starshine annotated hardbacks is in the mail! I'll have more in stock next week, if anyone is interested in picking one up. Learn more at https://gsj.space/starshine-hardbacks
Every Sci-Fi Star Map
Ouch. This hits a little close to home, doesn’t it? I don’t think we’ve stumbled onto the Evil Methane Breathers yet, but…give it time. 🙄
https://boingboing.net/2017/04/17/every-sci-fi-star-map.html
Originally posted on Twitter.
Large Magellanic Cloud
A 1,060-hour image of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC): A mind-blowing view which might be the world's longest exposure picture in amateur astronomy. Taken by "Ciel Austral" in Chile. https://astrospace-page.blogspot.com/2019/04/1060-hours-image-of-the-large-magellanic-cloud-chile.html
Originally posted on Twitter.
Trifecta
SpaceX has successfully landed all 3 boosters of its Falcon Heavy rocket at 3 separate locations - and it's only the 2nd flight of the Falcon Heavy.
Space is hard, and in a very busy week for our accelerating journey into the stars, 2 huge success and one near miss isn't too bad. 🤗
Here's some insane footage of the side booster landings from multiple cameras at once: https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1116472530531958784
Credit for the images below: Jason Major (https://twitter.com/JPMajor/status/1116471931002400776) and Roman Tkachenko (https://twitter.com/_RomanTkache…/status/1116471879093620736).
For a ton of jaw-dropping images of the launch, including the ones below, check out astrophotographer Trevor Mahlmann’s Twitter feed and website.
Originally posted on Facebook.
Event Horizon
Here you go, space nerds: the first ever image of the event horizon of a black hole! The supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87 is 54 million light-years from earth and has a mass of 6.5 billion suns.
The close-up image is from the Event Horizon Telescope, the wide-field view from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Early analysis suggests the observations are consistent with Einstein's Theory of General Relativity (some were hoping they would conflict, because having to redo all the theories is kind of exciting).
Download a high-res version of the image here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lightsinthedark/47579266551/
Originally posted on Facebook.
Jupiter Spiral
In the arms of the maelstrom: in this view from JunoCam, bright white clouds can be seen popping up in and around the arms of a rotating northern hemisphere storm: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/news/jupiter-spiral
Originally posted on Twitter.
Artificial
Tigaer-Design (Christian Hecker) is one of the finest artists creating spacescapes and futuristic art today. This piece in particular, "Artificial," served as partial inspiration for the design of the anarchs' Post Epsilon base on Palaemon, which figured prominently in the events of Rubicon and the first half of Requiem.
You know, the post with the floating landing pads, the scene of Alex and Kennedy's first Caeles Prism test and one bar fight. 😝
You can see all his work on Art Station (https://www.artstation.com/tigaer) or Deviant Art (https://www.deviantart.com/tigaer)
Originally posted on Facebook.
The Big 100K
BOO. YAH. 🎉
I can now say with a high degree of confidence that TSLG will be the longest of the Asterion Noir novels. I heard some of you like Moar Words? 😛
Originally posted on Facebook.
A Birthday Present
On my Birthday, I’m giving all of you a present: a fun little excerpt from THE STARS LIKE GODS, the upcoming conclusion to the Asterion Noir trilogy.
✨✨
The suite two-thirds of the way up Namino Tower couldn’t fairly be categorized as isolated or neglected, which were the first two words Cameron had used to describe her destination. The lights were bright and the view out the window in the lobby pleasant.
The furniture did have the veneer of mass production, as though it had been plucked from beneath a store sign reading, ‘Buy Office Furniture Here.’ Silence hovered in the air amid a hint of staleness; it marked a stark departure from the constant bustling activity and noise of the Pavilion, and she wondered when voices had last animated the lobby.
A dyne stood behind the counter, its frame locked so rigidly she assumed it was shut down. But as she approached, it lifted its head with a squeaky flexing of its joints. “How can I help you?”
“Nika Kirumase. I’m here to see Lance Palmer.”
“He is expecting you. You may enter.”
A door across the way opened, and after taking a last dubious glance around the lobby, she walked through it.
A man lounged behind a desk. Despite the presence of at least a dozen panes arrayed above the desk, he’d kicked back his chair, wound his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles atop the desk. Tawny hair fell neatly across his forehead above sage eyes. Rolled-up sleeves exposed tanned, muscular arms. Tactical pants led to scuffed and faded combat boots, which looked rather out of place atop the office desk.
One corner of his mouth twitched into an almost-smirk. “Nika Kirumase. I figured you’d come calling eventually. Frankly, I thought it would be more sooner and not so much later.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Well, I was a little busy being psyche-wiped, leading a rebellion, fleeing from government-funded assassins and exposing a Guide-led conspiracy to conceal the existence of a deadly alien species taking over the galaxy. You know, the usual.”
Mountain Drives & Plotting
Two 3.5 hour drives in two days when you're the passenger is a *great* opportunity for some heavy-duty story planning....😈
#whatcomesnext #amplotting
For those keeping track, yes, this is the same notebook that was featured in the blog post, "Cross-country Journeys, Chicken Scratch & Bossy Characters." It seemed appropriate. 😁
Cheers
Investigating the Worlds of Our Solar System
A conversation: Planet or dwarf planet: all worlds are worth investigating. https://theconversation.com/planet-or-dwarf-planet-all-worlds-are-worth-investigating-74682
Originally posted on Twitter.
Galactic Center visualization
Guys, this video.
From the Chandra Observatory: “Want to take a trip to the center of our Milky Way? A new visualization using Chandra data & @NASAAmes supercomputer simulations provides viewers with an immersive, 360-degree view of the center of our Galaxy! “
YouTube link in case the embed doesn’t work for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBxW2_B9_Is .
Originally posted on Twitter.
Amazon Books Excursion
A real bookstore this time, not that silly "4 star" nonsense!
...and still, I was disappointed. 😒 The store was maybe 1/3 the size of a typical B&N. While they did some cool things with their front displays ("Unputdownable: Kindle readers finish these books in 3 days or less" and so on), the overall book distribution was 2/3 nonfiction to 1/3 fiction - and nearly all the fiction was lit fic. The only genre fiction in the store were current bestsellers that either trend toward lit fic or have otherwise garnered critical attention (such as Black Leopard, Red Wolf), or recognized classics (such as Dune).
In part, it could have simply been catering to its customers, as any retail store should. Cherry Creek is an extremely upscale neighborhood, and I'd believe that its denizens would never demean themselves by being caught reading *genre* fiction. 😱
Still, disappointed. Amazon is flubbing a great market opportunity here. Readers LOVE bookstores, and we're desperate for great ones we can lose ourselves in. This isn't one.
Space Is Big. Really Big. You Just Won't Believe...
Space is very big. Some of its new explorers will be tiny. An excellent piece by Shannon Stirone on the MarCO cubesats and what their success means for future missions: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/science/cubesats-marco-mars.html
Originally posted on Twitter.
Farscape Omnibus
Check out this beauty that #MrJennsen just randomly came home with! It's not my birthday or anything.
I honestly didn't know these comics existed, or I would've picked them up earlier. For those curious, the story picks up literal minutes after the end of The Peacekeeper Wars.
The Undiscovered Country
Opportunity's final image mosaic from #Mars shows the mission's last tracks and pristine terrain waiting for visits from future explorers. See the full high-resolution panorama at https://go.nasa.gov/2F7JWbn
Originally posted on Twitter.
