Titanomachia

Titan (and Mimas - the Death Star moon)! Second biggest moon in the Solar System, and maybe first in our hearts (tough choices). It is one of two moons with an atmosphere, and a very thick one at that. Nitrogen based, like Earth's. However, Earth has no views like this:

An excellent art piece as well. For reference, Titan is bigger than Mercury, and far more interesting, though that's an opinion I suppose. What Titan tells us - and all the other cool moons, but especially Titan - is that moons can be quite diverse, and that large planets can have quite many of them, acting like mini "solar" systems. Saturn to date has a confirmed 62 moons, with more likely to come. More art:

I can't tell you all their names correctly, except Titan at center, occulted. Each moon can exert a gravitational influence on the other moons, and I'm sure one day we'll discover a moon with a moon. It will be cool. For now, appreciate Titan:

False color Titan pics showing the changing cloud formations. It rains on Titan. There's lakes:

More false color. "False color" means scientists have assigned colors to the image based on the data at hand. It's accurate for what it is, but also subjective to a degree, though also close enough. For the record, just about any cool color space shot you've seen is false color to some degree. Here's the real deal:

More lakes! The fishin' ain't so good though, one assumes. As the liquid on Titan is methane, and the mountains and valleys and boulders and rocks are ice. Wicked hard ice - the temp on the surface is around -200 degrees Celsius. Cold as heck. It is truly an alien world, but oh so familiar:

Titan seas, with islands. One day our robot children will vacation on the shores of Methane Sea.

Rivers of methane emptying into methane seas. It's like Earth, but will never be like Earth. Titan is highly inhospitable to us, and so it will be left to the robots. Check out this amazing pic:

The surface of Titan, as seen by Huygens - a probe shot from Cassini during its early years. Another feather in the cap of this amazing science mission. Those are little pebbles of ice. Rounded from some type of erosion, be it liquid or wind. Titan has all the weather we have on Earth, except it's methane raining down from the orange clouds. So cool.

Is there life? Seems hard to imagine, but every year we find life on Earth in the strangest of places - super heated volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean; 6 miles below ground deep in the bedrock; way, way high in the sky, floating bacteria living forever in the clouds. Life is everywhere on Earth, and it seems it has always been so - evidence of life now goes back to just a few hundred million years after the creation of Earth as we know it - which is not the original Earth, not by many iterations.

Perhaps some form of life similar to life on Earth exists on Titan. Or perhaps a life unlike life on Earth exists on Titan. Or, more likely, life does not exist on Titan, at least not on the surface. It is possible Titan has a vast underground ocean of warm liquid water, and imagine what kind of sealife might evolve there. Gnarly stuff, like everything in the ocean. One day we'll find out - we need to send out the bots in our name.

Lord of The E Ring

It's Enceladus! An amazing moon of Saturn that we've learned a ton about in the past ten years, thanks to the wonderful Cassini probe. It's the brightest object in the Solar System for starters (apart from the Sun, of course). Why? Because it's completely ice and highly reflective. But see those blue stripes at the bottom?

The so called "Tiger Stripes" are areas on the Southside of the moon where the ice crust is weakened, allowing liquid water to rise to the surface. Liquid water, you say, that far out into space?! But it's so cold! True, but thanks to tidal friction caused by the massive Saturn and the other moons around it, Enceladus is squeezed and stretched with every orbit and this creates enough friction within the moon to generate heat. Heat enough to not only create a global subsurface ocean, but warm enough to create CRYOVOLCANOES.

Like Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park, geysers. But on a scale far, far bigger - these geysers, or water volcanoes, shoot an enormous amount of water into space, where it instantly freezes. Some falls back onto Enceladus, creating new layers of ice crust. The rest goes into orbit around Saturn, creating the "E Ring":

As seen here. Amazing, yes? And so we begin our tour of the Solar System's moons. Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting moon(s)!

Venus and Luna

Another redshirt shot of Venus and The Pleiades, with a very special guest "Ring around the Moon (w/ cloud)"! Not a shop in any way, just some funky clouds making it all spectral and astral n' stuff. Word. Click for big. Bonus ring pic:

I'm ashamed to admit I don't have a big enough lens to capture phenomena like Ye Olde Moon Ring in their entirety. This was the best I could do to fit it all in one pic - no dice. It was a huge ring around the Moon, and striking to behold, especially with the bright planets to the lower right. The night sky is amazing when you can finally see it, free of interference.

The source of myth in fact - consider, even ancient pre-humans understood the movement of stars and planets. They understood this "cage" we live in - with the stars far, far away, disappearing during the day when a giant fireball awakened. Which some figured out, way, way back when, was just another star, like all the lights of night. That will blow even an Erectus mind.

Also too: As I've said before, we need to call our moon a name, not "The Moon". The word "moon" refers to any natural satellite in orbit around a planet. Our moon is but one of hundreds (millions really when you consider Saturn's rings are made up of pieces of ice and each piece is technically a moon) of moons in our Solar System, and one of hundreds of billions in our galaxy, and mayhaps of trillions across the Universe. As you see, referring to the awesome object orbiting Earth as "The Moon" is no descriptor anymore.

I propose Luna, which is a cheat, sure, but Latin is classy. I am open to suggestions, though of course I will have no role whatsoever in naming our moon. Thank you for your support.

The Wanderers

From the front porch of Gondolin, late March 2012 - a cool occurrence where Venus is higher in the sky than Jupiter, the two bright lights you see here. The tight star group above Venus is the Pleiades, or, The Seven Sisters. The best constellation. But I'm not here to wax rhapsodic about the Pleiades, not tonight at least. Rather, I give you artsy shaky pictures of Venus and Jupiter, with Venus at the top:

All pictures about 90 second exposures, on a tripod, and I moved the tripod in the observed patterns to produce the triptastic trails.

Try it yourself! It's fun. I imagine you could get quite good at it, and draw a picture with the points of light. I shall endeavor to try again.

For Gondolin!

Ancient Greek war mask, with form fitting face behind. War has led to a good percentage of human evolution - both in body and technology. Death is the ultimate motivator. For Gondolin! For your dreams!

The 3rd leg of the grand stream, draining Gondolin of stagnant waters and all possibility of flooding. Little round rocks collected for weeks, piled in stacks, laid across the established channel. Erosion prevention is the aim. Beauty a secondary concern.

But it is a concern. Beautiful, is it not?

The water must flow.

Jogging through the ruins

Imagine Greece or Rome at the height of their splendor. Musta been pretty dope, especially considering the alternative - "barbarian lands", IE, anything outside the Polis proper. But all cities fall, eventually, and so I give you redshirt's Thanksgiving 2008 trip to Delphi:

Funny story. I missed the 8 AM bus cuz I went to the wrong subway terminal because apparently with Greek written in English you can spell things any way you want, and so the travel book sent me to the wrong station and even after sprinting, I missed the 8 AM. No problem, I thought, Delphi is open till 5, according to the same travel book. Plenty of time to explore. I catch the 10 AM bus and arrive at Delphi at 1. O hai! Winter hours, we're closing at 3. And so commences redshirt's quick jog through Delphi.

Some columns and tumble down stone and brick. Hop-hop!

Bitchin' amphitheater dudes. Also, vertigo. Hop-hop!

Whoop-Whoop! Top of the hill, home to the Delphi Rams. Fun fact! This stadium was a late addition to the most Holy sacred site of Delphi, a Roman construction. Leave it to the Romans to bring football into the Vatican plus Mecca and Jerusalem combined, figuratively speaking. Savages.

This is it - the Oracle at Delphi. Her temple, at least. Imagine those pillars extending all the way around that central stone structure, with a kick ass roof too. And then imagine standing within such a temple, overlooking that view, on some stormy night in 450BC and a General and entourage arrive in the dead of darkness, seeking prophecy. And some lady would give it to them, high on gas, and thus history unfolds.

Fun fact about Delphi you may not know! The site was not only the location of the famous Oracle, but also served as the bank of ancient Greece. Each major city-state had a building on site dedicated towards storing their wealth. Athens, Sparta, Corinth, you name it - if you were a city-state of any shake, you had gold stored at Delphi. Twas Holy, after all. And who better to protect your money than God?

After the War

The Sarajevo Winter Olympics awards platform. In 1984 it was the scene of triumph. A few years later, target practice. Such is the way of war, swiftly ripping away hard fought gains in culture.

Like ski jumping. Seriously, think how luxurious it is to live in a time when we build huge structures so people can ski jump off them, and we do so at an intense level of competition.

Now see them as you stumble out of the woods chasing a rabbit for dinner (in the far future), and you come across these two stone "bridges?" to nowhere. What strange magic men of old once practiced!

Aye, magic. Look around! But war can take it all away, and not just bombs and guns and tanks and such, but economic and cultural war can be equally destructive. Once you lose a certain level of civilization, for whatever reason, there's no guarantee it will come back. There's only so much any society can take before it breaks. Such has been the fall of all great empires, all nations, all peoples, sooner or later.

It can be delayed, with wisdom. But all things fade in time.

Death of a City

Michigan Central Station, Detroit. Long abandoned, this beautiful building stands as a stark symbol of what has happened to Detroit over the last 3 decades, and to a lesser degree, much of the United States. There's lots of depressing photo series detailing the destruction of what was once America's 4th most populous city (population in the 2 millions in the 1950's - it stands at 700K now). Here's one. Why? What has happened? I posit two main reasons:

Race. The late 60's featured race related riots in many American cities, Detroit prime among them.

 "White Flight" was a phenomena across the urban North, and many cities were dealt severe blows. The ones that recovered - NYC, for example - did so based on transitioning to the new economy, the so called "Service" industries. Which covers investments, banks, and so on. The cities that have not done well relied on manufacturing. Which brings me to the second reason:

Outsourcing of America's manufacturing base. This has gutted many cities, regions, states. Abandoned factories fill our cold Northern lands. The jobs all went to Japan, then Taiwan, now China, with Vietnam climbing swiftly.

Suicide nets at a Foxconn dormitory. Foxconn made my Mac, and my iPhone, and your iPad, by the way.

In summary, the Conservative movement we live under today was forged in the 60's with the rise of Goldwater and the Birchers. This movement gained power in the states throughout the 70's on the wave of white fear of blacks, and urbanity in general. Also egghead, godless hippy elites. With Reagan came the revolution nationwide, and the scouring of our country. For the sake of profits, our manufacturing industries were shipped overseas and the Unions were busted and everyone (except the 1%) got poorer even though they were working more than ever, and lies became Truth on Fox News, and the Washington Village said it was good.

And thus cities like Detroit fall to ruin in the middle of what is supposedly the richest country in the world, and we all look the other way. But hey! Shit's cheap at Wal-Mart, right?

Screaming Trees

All things fade in time. You, me, Rome, Earth, the Sun, the Milky Way, the entire Universe, some trillion trillion years from now. Not my fault, nor my picture. Lovely though, is it not? The power of entropy?

An abandoned factory in Japan, nature reclaiming the space. As entropy is nature, all order will be deconstructed, torn down, eaten up, broken into pieces and spread all about. Entropy is the way of things. All our deeds are but acts holding back the tide, so ever briefly.

Our end is inevitable. The only true questions are when and how. Probably asteroid, sometime in the future. But there's so many other options! Nuclear bombs, earthquakes, global warming, solar radiation, magnetic shift, name your apocalypse, and you'll find the likelihood is not insignificant. Ignore the possibility we do at our own peril. Life is fragile, we exist on the surface of a reality of harshness. Prepare yeself, mortal!

Fryeburg Fair

Ayuh. At the Fair. The Oxen Pull was pahticularly excitin'. The weather was wicked nice let me tell you. Indian Summer they call it.

Click for big. All identities protected. Except for Joe Bolf. Both pics redshirt represented.

Too Late

Unless everything falls apart, we'll not be agrarian again. Urbanity is humanity's future, whether here on Earth or elsewhere. Get used to it, or get weeded out of of the gene pool. The future demands folks willing to be crowded.

You can't see the stars in the city. But that's OK - we have drones.

Living in Sci-Fi

Pencil in Hover Cars and that's some serious Sci-Fi skyline, amirite? NYC, Ladies and Gents - keeping up with the times. Check out Hong Kong or your latest Chinese Metropolis for proof - it's a dog eat dog world out there, architecturally speaking. With so many loose billions floating hither and yon, the City 'scape's gonna get EXTREME.

Redshirt's Lament 2013 Top 11 Predictions!

Manhattanhenge - a twice yearly event in NYC around May 28th and July 12. On these two days the sun rises and sets aligned with the East-West streets, causing many hands to be raised to eyes those days, I assure you. Manhattenhenge can be predicted - thousands of years into the future, if you wanted to - because of science! We've observed patterns in nature then expanding these observations with theories tested through experiments producing something closer to Truth.  And so with those lofty thoughts, here are my completely unscientific predictions for 2013. In no particular order:

1. US government shutdown in March, Republicans hold country hostage
2. Worldwide economic stagnation, marginal US growth
3. More mass shootings! Still not the right time to talk about gun control
4. Western retreat from Afghanistan accelerates with many European countries departing, in addition to large US troop withdrawals.
5. Comet Ison in November brings out the freaks - it's going to be epically bright.
6. On Mars, Curiosity discovers strong evidence for past life on the once wet planet.
7. More and even cooler Exoplanets. Note that as each year passes and Kepler watches the same stars, unceasingly, we'll find better and better planets, since it takes time for planets with bigger orbits to be discovered. These first 800 are just the appetizers.
8. More crazy weather! Monster Tornadoes! Epic Hurricanes! Crushing Droughts! Massive Floods! I've been reading some scary doom and 'n gloom predictions, so batten down and review your insurance now.
9. US Sports Winners: Patriots/Oklahoma City/Anaheim Angels of the City of Los Angeles/Hockey? LOL.  Women's MMA becomes ironically popular.
10. Django Unchained wins all the Academy Awards
11. Redshirt comes across a black bear in the woods - it has to happen one day, I reckon.

Tune in next year at this time to see how I did. Till then, here's MIThenge: