ASTRONOMY - Herschel Crater on Mimas

 2022 August 13

Herschel Crater on Mimas
Image Credit Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Mimas, small 400 kilometer-diameter moon of Saturn, is host to 130 kilometer-diameter Herschel crater, one of the larger impact craters in the entire Solar System. The robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn in 2010 recorded this startling view of small moon and big crater while making a 10,000-kilometer record close pass by the diminutive icy world. Shown in contrast-enhanced false color, the image data reveal more clearly that Herschel's landscape is colored slightly differently from heavily cratered terrain nearby. The color difference could yield surface composition clues to the violent history of Mimas. Of course, an impact on Mimas any larger than the one that created the 130-kilometer Herschel might have destroyed the small moon of Saturn.

MERVEILLEUX MONDE SOUS-MARIN - Ponte de gorgone rouge

Méditerranée - France - Archipel des Iles d'Hyères - Ile du Levant.

Ponte de gorgone rouge (Paramuricea clavata - Purple gorgonian).

© Alexis Rosenfeld

ASTRONOMY - Portrait of the Eagle Nebula

 2022 August 12

Portrait of the Eagle Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Charles Bonafilia

Explanation: A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas, Messier 16 (M16) is also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the region adopts the colorful Hubble palette and includes cosmic sculptures made famous in Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex. Described as elephant trunks or Pillars of Creation, dense, dusty columns rising near the center are light-years in length but are gravitationally contracting to form stars. Energetic radiation from the cluster stars erodes material near the tips, eventually exposing the embedded new stars. Extending from the ridge of bright emission left of center is another dusty starforming column known as the Fairy of Eagle Nebula. M16 lies about 7,000 light-years away, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake). As framed, this telescopic portrait of the Eagle Nebula is about 70 light-years across.

MUSIC - Franz Schubert - Marche militaire

"Marche militaire"

ASTRONOMY - Perseids and MAGIC

 2022 August 11

Perseids and MAGIC
Image Credit & Copyright: Urs Leutenegger

Explanation: On August 11, 2021 a multi-mirror, 17 meter-diameter MAGIC telescope reflected this starry night sky from the Roque de los Muchachos European Northern Observatory on the Canary Island of La Palma. MAGIC stands for Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov. The telescopes can see the brief flashes of optical light produced in particle air showers as high-energy gamma rays impact the Earth's upper atmosphere. To the dark-adapted eye the mirror segments offer a tantalizing reflection of stars and nebulae along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. But directly behind the segmented mirror telescope, low on the horizon, lies the constellation Perseus. And on that date the dramatic composite nightscape also captured meteors streaming from the radiant of the annual Perseid meteor shower. This year the Perseid shower activity will again peak around August 13 but perseid meteors will have to compete with the bright light of a Full Moon.

ASTRONOMY - Dust Clouds of the Pacman Nebula

 2022 August 10

Dust Clouds of the Pacman Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Douglas J. Struble (Future World Media)

Explanation: Stars can create huge and intricate dust sculptures from the dense and dark molecular clouds from which they are born. The tools the stars use to carve their detailed works are high energy light and fast stellar winds. The heat they generate evaporates the dark molecular dust as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow red. Pictured here, a new open cluster of stars designated IC 1590 is nearing completion around the intricate interstellar dust structures in the emission nebula NGC 281, dubbed the Pac-man Nebula because of its overall shape. The dust cloud on the upper left is classified as a Bok Globule as it may gravitationally collapse and form a star -- or stars. The Pacman Nebula lies about 10,000 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia.

SANTé/MéDECINE - Les vertus du cannabidiol (CBD)

Difficile de passer à côté de la popularité du cannabidiol. Depuis pas mal d’années maintenant, cet extrait issu du chanvre voit sa notoriété monter en flèche, notamment car il se présente sous diverses formes et offre des vertus non négligeables. Parmi elles, la capacité à relaxer et détendre la personne qui en consomme. Mais pas seulement : problèmes d’articulations, douleurs musculaires, manque de sommeil, crises d’angoisse à répétition…consommé régulièrement et à dose raisonnable, le CBD peut avoir un impact positif sur de nombreux problèmes que l’on rencontre au quotidien, jour et nuit. Pour tester les effets procurés par le CBD, partez à sa rencontre. Dans les grandes lignes l'huile composée à 12% de CBD et quasiment dépourvue de THC, aide à se défaire de l’anxiété et du stress, et de retrouver un sommeil profond, le tout naturellement et sans addiction.

MUSIQUE CLASSIQUE - Frederic Chopin - Tristesse

"Tristesse"

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHIES - La nébuleuse de la Tête de Cheval

Portrait haut en couleur et détaillé de la célèbre nébuleuse de la Tête de Cheval située près de la ceinture de la constellation d'Orion, en 2014, par Bill Snyder (États-Unis). L'astrophotographe a cumulé quelque 13 heures d'exposition au foyer de son télescope de 432 mm installé dans les montagnes de la Sierra Nevada en Californie. C'est un dense nuage de poussière en mouvement qui dessine la silhouette de cet animal devant les grandes draperies d'une partie du nuage moléculaire d'Orion.  

Cette nébuleuse obscure est distante d'environ 1.500 années-lumière de nous.

© Bill Snyder, Flickr

FuturaSciences

ASTRONOMY - Leaving Earth

 022 August 9

Leaving Earth
Video Credit: NASA/JHU Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Inst. Washington

Explanation: What it would look like to leave planet Earth? Such an event was recorded visually in great detail by the MESSENGER spacecraft as it swung back past the Earth in 2005 on its way in toward the planet Mercury. Earth can be seen rotating in this time-lapse video, as it recedes into the distance. The sunlit half of Earth is so bright that background stars are not visible. The robotic MESSENGER spacecraft is now in orbit around Mercury and has recently concluded the first complete map of the surface. On occasion, MESSENGER has continued to peer back at its home world. MESSENGER is one of the few things created on the Earth that will never return. At the end of its mission MESSENGER crashed into Mercury's surface.