Galactic Ghost

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is very appropriate for the holiday. Faint clouds have a ghostly appearance; VdB 152 in the constellation of Cepheus. Who you gonna call?

Tiny Bubbles

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows planetary nebula PK 164 +31.1 (in other words, the Perek & Kohoutek catalog entry number 164, followed by additional information), found in the constellation of Lynx (the Wildcat). Tiny bubble? Only on the scale of the universe at large!

Nebula of the Arachnid Overlords

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day would be a perfect setting for a classic space opera by Jack Williamson. NGC 6537, The Red Spider Planetary Nebula (with amazing structure and detail in its layers).

Rock of Doom

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a view of Phobos, one of the "hurtling moons of Barsoom" (Mars). Take a good look, it'll only be around for another 100 million odd years.

Layers Within Layers

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows emission layers around a short-lived (and brightly burning) O-type star within NGC 6164. Take a look, because it'll only be around for a few more million years!

We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot

Holy flipping blue claws! That's some crab!

Reflections Of

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a nice shot of a "reflection nebula" (as well as some other nice features), vdB1. I think they found a good first entry for this catalog!

A Basement of Non-Euclidian Geometry

The creeping horror...as reported to the housing association.

Medusa

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is of Abell 21, more commonly known as The Medusa Nebula, an old (and distorted) planetary nebula in the constellation of Gemini.

Send Up the Toy Box!

More debris in orbit. It's getting thick up there.

The Black Dog Runs at Night

I could really use some coffee about now.

High Orbit

A ring-like space habitat with a central pool inhabited by supercomputer-operating dolphins? Write me that story!

Second Breakfast?

When you hear about Christopher Tolkien's distaste of movies made from the works of his father, I bet stuff like this is the major reason for the distaste.

Star Clouds

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a wide view of M31 (our neighboring galaxy in Andromeda) and it's neighbor NGC 206, a region of young (blue) stars.

Some of Their Favorites

Reading through The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith, I found a note in the biographical sketch by Donald Sidney-Fryer which mentioned that both Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft noted their favorite weird stories in a fanzine one month apart. How many of these have you read?

Clark Ashton Smith: The Yellow Sign (Robert W. Chambers); The House of Sounds (M.P. Shiel; The Willows (Algernon Blackwood) A View from a Hill (M.R. James); The Death of Halpin Frayser (Ambrose Bierce); The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Allan Poe); The Masque of the Red Death (Edgar Allan Poe); The Novel of the White Powder (Arthur Machen); The Call of Cthulhu (H.P. Lovecraft); The Colour Out of Space (H.P. Lovecraft).

H.P. Lovecraft: The Novel of the Black Seal (Arthur Machen); The White People (Arthur Machen); Count Magnus (M.R. James); The Moon Pool (A. Merritt) (novelette version).

Sidney-Fryer says of Lovecraft's choices "Six of them duplicate Smith's choices, with only four titles different." The four listed above are the "different" but he does not list the "sames". Will have to do some searching!

I'll also have to cross-check this with the titles/authors mentioned in Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature (online versions here and here).

Partly Cloudy

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day will have you wondering if your eyes are seeing things. No, just some clouds. Some clouds!

Saladin's Shorts

Saladin Ahmed; Engraved on the Eye (Ridan Publications; 2012; cover art, not indicated)

I can't recall exactly where I came across Saladin Ahmed. Facebook? Twitter? His own website? In any case, the description of his first novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon interested me (and has been reviewed here), so I sought out what he had published already. Alas, not much came up, a few short stories, scattered in online magazines and podcasts, but what I read interested me.

This self-published book (eBook only) gathers all of Saladin's short works under one cover. You have two stories set in the same universe as Throne (Where Virtue Lives and Judgment of Swords and Souls), fun in the Old West with a twist or three (Mister Hadj's Sunset Ride), generally twisted humor (General Akmed's Revenge?, Doctor Diablo Goes Through the Motions, Iron Eyes and the Watered Down World), straight-up dystopian apocalyptic cyberpunk (The Faithful Soldier, Prompted) and straight-up fantasy/horror (Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Iameela).

All polished and interesting and with some nice stylistic or plot twists. All showing a level of sophistication and skill higher than most first-time novelists. Would that he typed faster!

Several of these I had read in my previous searches. Doctor Diable Goes Through the Motions was completely new and is a gem. Supervillains trapped in endless Power Point presentations and having their souls sucked away by endless board meetings. And I want to see a novel set in the universe of Iron Eyes and the Watered Down World. Fritz Leiber and Robert E. Howard are sitting in Valhalla, jealous. Oh, so jealous.

Great stuff here. Get thee to your favorite online eBook retailer and buy!

Made up of: Introduction; Author's Note; Where Virtue Live; Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Iameela; Judgment of Swords and Souls; Doctor Diablo Goes Through the Motions; General Akmed's Revenge?; Mister Hadj's Sunset Ride; The Faithful Soldier, Prompted; Iron Eyes and the Watered Down World.

Counts as ten (10) entries in 2012: The Year in Shorts.

Boneyard

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a sad sight.

Astronomical Sketch of the Day

While working on a presentation about amateur astronomy for my daughter's Earth Science class (eight periods, I can feel my SAN slipping away now!), I came across a lovely sight dedicated to the art of astronomical sketching. Sketching not only is a great way of recording your observations (at a relatively low cost compared to any photographic outfit), but sketching an object helps you to observe it better.

The sketches on this site are by "amateurs". Wow. I have a long way to go.

Knight Moves

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33), a dark nebula in the constellation of Orion. I've found this one to be one of the hardest to spot, needing special filters and a dark sky. I've only been sure of spotting it on one occasion.

Zodiac

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a nice nearly all-sky shot of the Milky Way and zodiacal light. Neither are seen anymore from my backyard, thanks to light pollution!

Mergers and Acquisitions

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows NGC 2623 in the constellation of Cancer. NGC 2623, also known as Arp 243, is actually a pair of galaxies in the process of merging.

Close Up: New Worlds

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a depiction of our "newest" neighbor (it has been there all along, we just didn't know it!).

Curtains and Streams

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a wonderful shot from Yellowstone National Park showing the erupting White Dome Geyser coupled with a curtain-like showing of the Aurora.

Mode of Operation

"Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pond and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practicing the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex."

(T.E. Lawrence)

Starwolf

Posted previously...but given what I've seen so far this "season", this is the television show I'd much rather see than anything currently playing.

I Really Ought To Keep Better Notes

He showered, and for once climbed very early into bed, feeling that he must have nightmares. About strange sounds in the winds, over the mysterious thickets of Mars. Or about some blackened, dried-out body of a sentient being, sixty million years dead, floating free in the Asteroid Belt. A few had been found. Some were in museums

.

(From...maybe The Planet Strappers by Raymond Z. Gallun? I need to keep better notes.)

Spiral Path

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an odd looking one. The star R Sculptoris was recently examined using the recently built ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array). It was found to be surrounded by gas and dust moving out from the star in a spiral pattern. What is causing this?

Being Negative

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a very different look at a familiar thing. The Sun, inverted, against an inverted starfield. The solar image shows a lot of "surface" detail that we cannot normally see.

Deep Time

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a new version of a "classic", the latest generation in the "deep field" shots of the Hubble Space Telescope. From the Deep Field to the Ultra Deep Field to the (now) Extreme Deep Field.

The Stars, Like Dust

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a beautiful shot of the area in Pegasus: galaxies embedded in an area of cosmic dust.

Wide Swath

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a beautiful shot of three degrees (six times the width of the full Moon) of the sky towards the center of the Milky Way. Most astronomical instruments only cover a smaller portion of the sky, so a vista like this must be built up over many images. Producing stunning shots, such as this, is secondary for this instrument (Pan-STARRS), it is designed for "wide angle viewing" to hunt for potentially dangerous asteroids.

A Different View

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows us aurora. So what, you say, we've seen many such pictures this "season". Not so much from this point of view!

Combat Jump

CSM Basil L. Plumley has passed away after a brief stay in hospice, out of complications due to colon cancer. I wrote a bit about him here, in 2008. Hopefully he is sharing drinks with other members of his unit who went first to clear the way.

More here. A photo of then Sgt. Major Plumley at LZ X-Ray.

And we can't forget another mention of this song. Social interactions, old school. More social interactions, old school. Look at those service stripes!

Background information. You might want to look up the genesis of the "username" behind the video. Extensive webiste. Full (?) trailer.

Wheel of Time

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a shot of star trails over a lighthouse located at Cape Cod, Massachusetts (USA). Dizzying!

Twisted Bubble

Yesterday we had one result of a star near the end of it's time on the main sequence, today we have a less symmetrical result. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows supernova remnant Simeis 147 in the constellations of Taurus and Auriga. Very faint (too faint for me!) and covering the span of six full moons in the evening sky (!).

Better Than Cinema

"I come in peace, I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all."

(General James Mattis)

Bobble

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a nice shot of the planetary nebula Abell 39. Bobble, not bubble, as it makes me think of the statis fields in the Vernor Vinge tales.

Don't. Blink.

No, no angels here, weeping or otherwise. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day will have yo wondering about what you are seeing.

First Nebula

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a beautiful shot of M42, the Great Nebula of Orion. This is something I visit every time I see it in the night sky and is the first nebula I remember looking at (with a very shaky, over-priced and under-powered "department store" telescope).

Warp Speed to Mars!

Well, maybe not. But it tickled the fanboi to read "dilithium crystals" in this article about a potential rocket system.

Truth

"It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men." Thucydides

Reflections Of

Aurora and a "falling star" are featured in today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Eye in the Sky

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows NGC 7293, the Helix Nebula, the remains of a stellar explosion.

Goats Over Greenland

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows a "goat" in the sky; one of many fantastic shapes generated during an aurora. "Mouseover" the picture to see the constellations.

Cool, Clear Water

Well, maybe not quite yet! But today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows that MSL Curiosity appears to have hit a "hole in one" with signs that it has found the remains of a streambed.

The Next Celestial Wonder?

Many amateur astronomers are straining their instruments towards today's Astronomy Picture of the Day and wondering if the next "comet of the century" is on the move.