Yes, I wouldn’t want to define it differently, because this tool is really a wonderful social highliner. This is what Danilo Ruocco also calls him in his excellent article (Danilo, journalist and writer, is one of the few Italians I have found on Glasp, because that’s what it is about).
The rules are extremely simple, on a first level. You install the extension for Chrome or derivatives (Brave, Vivaldi, etc.) and from that moment on you have a set of highlighters, of different colours, ready to be used on any web page, to mark phrases of particular interest.
This is enough to start changing my modus operandi, which in these cases consisted of simply saving the page to Pocket and then going there to highlight the important sentences.
This image was acquired by the Space Shuttle Columbia with a digital camera during the STS-107 mission. It shows the Sun playing with the Earth’s atmosphere, spreading a wide and suggestive glow.
Credits: NASA
Columbia’s crew perished during a tragic accident on their return to Earth on February 1, 2003. This photo was released by NASA on Remembrance Day 2022, nineteen years after that terrible tragedy.
It’s called Under the Star and it’s another pleasant occasion to meet stars on Spotify (I mean, not celebrities, but real stars). Such playlist it’s very good for working without distraction (even if you’re not in the Observatory) or event to go to sleep, as the few words of presentation seem to suggest.
With this occasion, I like to point out that – speaking of stars – there is another list you can find interesting (disclaimer: it’s created by me), it’s called simply Stardust (previous name was Sun and the other stars). It also appears in the right column of this blog.
It’s not only instrumental, because it features songs that have something of astronomical in the title. Oh, and it’s collaborative too. Yes, it’s not exactly viral (well, maybe it’s a vocable not too adequate in these times), but feel free to submit your favourite “astronomical” songs to the list!
Do you know of other (even loosely) astronomy related playlist on Spotify? Let me know in the comments, I’ll check them with interest.
And this is the right song for this moment. I have just set up the blog, which was stagnant, importing posts from another blog, and well, we are here. Just like starting over.
This will be, in my mind, the English counterpart of my freshly redesigned Italian blog. I’ll write here from time to time. And, what is better than a kiss, to start over, to return to write, to return to enjoy the simple and pleasantly useless art of making blog post?
Who write blogposts in 2021? Ones who write for pleasure. Only who is free from any expectation.
This time Hubble takes us to admire a violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas, the remnant of a supernova explosion. Called N 63A, the object constitutes the remains of a star of great mass, which has finished its life trajectory by pouring its gaseous layers into a region, moreover, turbulent on its own.
Supernova remnant N 63A. Credits: NASA/ESA/HEIC and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The supernova remnant is part of a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, an irregular galaxy about 160,000 light-years away from the Milky Way.
Namely, the role of supernova explosions with respect to star formation mechanisms is not clear to the astronomers. Supernova remnants have long been thought to trigger episodes of new formation when their expanding layers meet and compact the gas around them. The hypothesis is suggestive: like a cycle, a passing of the baton, from the death (of a star) to life (of many others). For now, however, N 63A looks young and exuberant, so much so that its violent tremors seem to be destroying the gas clouds they encounter, rather than forcing them to collapse to form new stars.
In this indecision between destruction and construction moves N 63A and perhaps it is not alone. It may be that its now excessive exuberance will change over time into a more disciplined activity, which will give rise to the construction ideas that astronomers expect.
And we, I tell myself, are faced with similar choices: we look for a way to affirm ourselves and our presence in a way of construction, that is, in something that can be useful, for people who live in the surrounding space. Spending oneself to give birth to something is perhaps the most beautiful and artistic act, but it is always our decision. To be taken, moment by moment.
This beautiful image of the Veil Nebula was acquired with the Hubble Space Telescope some time ago. Now it has been reprocessed with new techniques, which bring to light some very fine details in the delicate ionized gas strands of the nebula.
The Veil Nebula. Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Z. Levay
To obtain such a striking image, Hubble observations were taken using five different filters. Moreover, a clever method of post processing has highlighted the areas of doubly ionized oxygen (in blue), of ionized hydrogen, and of ionized nitrogen (here in red). The Veil Nebula is located about two thousand one hundred light years from Earth, relatively close in astronomical terms. Actually, this image shows just a detail. The nebula was formed by the supernova outbreak of a star about 20 times the size of the Sun, about ten thousand years ago. The remains of the exploded star created this scene of surprising beauty.
It comes to mind now, while much of the world celebrates the mysteries of death and rebirth contained in Easter (or at least reflects on them, on the wave of the tradition that however, it brings thought stimuli valid for everyone). Now I can’t help but think of certain deads which bear much fruit in the cosmos. What seemed lost, from a different point of view, is a new gain. We need to broaden our vision. It is tiring, it is a real job. Yes, the star really die, but what is born of it is an unexpected flowering.
What can help us remember this? I can just suggest that beauty must have its part, beauty must enter into it, in some way. Like the beauty of this nebula. The enthusiasm of dedication is incomparable to the enthusiasm of beauty, Luigi Giussani said.
The beauty of the cosmos is for something. To be seen, we might venture. For an enthusiasm, ultimately. A crazy thought, perhaps? Who knows. But a happy thought, all things considered. Wish you a Happy Easter.
