Casting the net further afield…
With so much chaos flooding every corner of the planet which we call Home, it is easy to forget that we are merely a minute fragment of a mammoth structure we don’t understand but have a name for; The Universe. So instead of spending my free time perusing the News sites for more reports confirming the severe selfishness, greed and xenophobia which plagues our species and the Earth as a whole, tonight I am handing over control of my literal focus to the Hubble telescope and mad scientists who spend their lives deciphering it’s data…and thereafter, instead of encountering human shaped demons in my nocturnal dream adventures I will hope to be dining with venetians…
The ‘red rectangle’ is a star which, unfortunately, is dying…as it slowly, and explosively makes it way to the celestial graveyard these strange ladder shapes surrounding the star are strengthing in size and luminosity.RIP red rectangle…
When Stars near the end of their existence, there are many ways that they can choose to go Out. A popular choice for this End Game is the ‘planetary nebulae’ which involves vast amounts of gas being sent outwards from the star’s core in electrifying patterns, as can be seen in this example, which depicts the famous ‘cats eye’ planteray nebulae (aka NGC 6543). It is thought that this fate awaits our own beloved star (The Sun) but have no fear, current predictions set the date for such a catastrophe at 5 billion years into the future…
Enough talk of Stellar Demise. I seem still stuck in the negative vein of Earth news, but times are achanging… The photo above shows the biggest, brightest and hottest birth cluster of stars yet discovered. Known affectionately as the Lynx arc, this glorius scene can be found behind a cackle of distant galaxies and contains more than a million blue-white stars which are all twice as scorchingly hot as all known stars in our own humble Milky Way galaxy…
The aptly christened ‘hourglass nebula’ was spotted way back in 1996. Not much is known about the status of the Eye around which the rings are structured, but I would suggest that it is the Eye of Sauron, which the hobbits managed to banish from our own galaxy back in the Dark Ages…(a ‘nebula’ is the term for celestial clouds of gas or dust)
Floating 500 million miles away from my base here in Brighton, UK, this cartwheel galaxy ponders it’s next move after been sucker punched by one of the two smaller nearby galaxies which sit quietly awaiting their punishment…It is both awe-inspiring and daunting to ponder what other Life may be Out There, light years beyond the accepted realms of our own spheres of existence. Like writing a message on a piece of paper, folding it, poking the package into an empty bottle and then chucking it into the Sea, we should be encapsulating the finest examples of human endeavour- The Proud Highway by Thompson or The Place of Dead Roads by Burroughs; to name but two such works of Art- then sending the package into Space…Who knows what kind of hands or claws such a message could fall into, and better still, what they may send back in return…The last thing we need, as Earth Dwellers, is a broadcast of CNN finding it’s way into the grasp of intelligent life-forms from distant galaxies. Nope. If a greeting of kinds is to be sent into the abyss, it must be the Right kind of message…
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