Category: Awesome

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A Blue Banded Blood Moon

A Blue Banded Blood Moon
Image Credit & Copyright: Zixiong Jin

What causes a blue band to cross the Moon during a lunar eclipse? The blue band is real but usually quite hard to see. The featured HDR image of last week’s lunar eclipse, however — taken from Norman, Oklahoma (USA) — has been digitally processed to exaggerate the colors. The gray color on the upper right of the top lunar image is the Moon‘s natural color, directly illuminated by sunlight. The lower parts of the Moon on all three images are not directly lit by the Sun since it is being eclipsed — it is in the Earth’s shadow. It is faintly lit, though, by sunlight that has passed deep through Earth’s atmosphere. This part of the Moon is red — and called a blood Moon — for the same reason that Earth’s sunsets are red: because air scatters away more blue light than red. The unusual purple-blue band visible on the upper right of the top and middle images is different — its color is augmented by sunlight that has passed high through Earth’s atmosphere, where red light is better absorbed by ozone than blue.

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Something Not Horrible For a Change

From Mock Paper Scissors:

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)

This picture is from the James Webb Space Telescope and it depicts the birth of stars:

The first anniversary image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope displays star birth like it’s never been seen before, full of detailed, impressionistic texture. The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the makings of future planetary systems.

I know everything is terrible and we’re all doomed, and the Republican Treachery (is that redundant?) or Stupidity (definitely redundant) will never end and we’re totally eff’ed in the dark, but this picture smacked my gob, and gave me just a tingle of the original Star Trek 1960s optimism. Y’all Qaeda and their theocrat supporters all say we are fallen angels and that Gawd hates us sinners and blah-blah-blah, but I prefer to think that Sir Terry’s Risen Apes theory is better.

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This is Brilliant

A Deal With The Devil

The deal was simple; we’d get to ask him a couple of questions and he got to ask us a couple of questions. A bit odd if you ask me. What could The Devil possibly want to know from us? I couldn’t tell you.

“Is heaven real?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, his voice like dying embers in a fireplace, “and so is hell.”

“Who goes to heaven?”

“Whoever God wants there.”

“I’m afraid that’s much too vague for us.”

“What’s that like?” he asked, his eyes perking up.

“I’m sorry?”

“What’s it like to be afraid?”

A bit confused, I tried my best to describe the feeling of fear. My explanation was a bit clumsy but he appeared to be satisfied with it.

“Why’d you want to know that?” I asked.

“Because when God made me, he didn’t give me the ability to feel fear. I can’t feel lots of things.”

“What can you feel?”

“Pain.”

I got us back on track.

“Can you elaborate on your answer from before? About heaven?”

“Of course. Heaven is open to all of God’s creations, whatever they do.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. When I was called in, the people in charge told me that my primary objective was to secure information on how humanity could get to heaven. With that sorted, anything else I gathered was a bonus.

“Are you going to heaven too? Since you were created by God,” I asked.

“I could, but I won’t,” he replied.

“Why?”

“Because I committed the most egregious sin. I did something only God was supposed to do.”

“What’s that?”

“I tried to create angels. They didn’t work out. My angels were made in my image, so I guess I’m to blame. All they do is cause suffering and destruction, so God said they had to go to hell, to suffer for an eternity”

“You mean the demons?”

“Yes, I guess I do. I couldn’t go to heaven, not while my creations were suffering. So I decided that when the time came, I would travel to hell and suffer with them.”

“Why?”

“Because I love them.”

I checked my watch, “Time’s almost up.”

“Yes it is.” he replied.

“I have to go back and get debriefed.” I said, preparing to leave the facility.

“They’ll be ecstatic when they get the good news.”

“And what might that be?”

“That no matter what we do, we’re going to heaven.”

“But you’re not, or anyone else for that matter.”

“But,” I said, my voice wavering, “You said…”

“Yes, I know what I said my child. But you’re not one of God’s creations,” he said with a tone I would mistake for sadness if I didn’t know better,

“You’re one of mine.”

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