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1. Stephen Sekula (steve@chirp.cooleysekula.net)'s status on Tuesday, 14-Jul-2015 01:12:54 UTC Stephen Sekula
   RT from Astronomy Picture of the Day https://pump.jpope.org/apod: Random image from the archives APOD: 2000 September 3 - Henrietta Leavitt Calibrates the Stars http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap000903.html APOD Image http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0009/leavitt_aavso.jpg Humanity's understanding of the relative brightness and variability of stars was revolutionized by the work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921). Working at Harvard College Observatory, Leavitt precisely calibrated the photographic magnitudes of 47 stars to which all other stars could be compared. Leavitt discovered and cataloged over 1500 variable stars in the nearby Magellanic Clouds. From this catalog, Leavitt discovered that brighter Cepheid variable stars take longer to vary, a fact used today to calibrate the distance scale of our universe. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap000903.html #astronomy #picture #space #NASA #APOD
2. Stephen Sekula (steve@chirp.cooleysekula.net)'s status on Saturday, 06-Dec-2014 14:16:23 UTC Stephen Sekula
   RT from Astronomy Picture of the Day https://pump.jpope.org/apod: APOD: 2014 December 6 - Orion Launch http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141206.html [OrionLaunchCrop1024_20141200010HQ.jpg] http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141206.html Image Link http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1412/OrionLaunch_20141200010HQ.jpg Headed for two orbits of planet Earth and a splashdown in the Pacific, Orion blazed into the early morning sky on Friday at 7:05am ET. The spacecraft was launched atop a United Launch Aliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Its first voyage into space on an uncrewed flight test, the Orion traveled some 3,600 miles from Earth, about 15 times higher than the orbital altitude of the International Space Station. In fact, Orion traveled farther into space than any spacecraft designed for astronauts since the Apollo missions to the Moon. The Orion crew module reached speeds of 20,000 miles per hour and temperatures approaching 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere about 4.5 hours after launch. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141206.html
3. Stephen Sekula (steve@chirp.cooleysekula.net)'s status on Friday, 24-Oct-2014 13:06:08 UTC Stephen Sekula
   RT from Astronomy Picture of the Day https://pump.jpope.org/apod: APOD: 2014 October 24 - AR 2192: Giant on the Sun http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141024.html [smFriedman_shivak2192_1024.jpg] http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141024.html Image Link http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1410/smFriedman_shivak2192_final.jpg As you (safely!) watched the progress of yesterday's partial solar eclipse, you probably also spotted a giant sunspot group. Captured in this sharp telescopic image from October 22nd the complex AR 2192 is beautiful to see, a sprawling solar active region comparable in size to the diameter of Jupiter. Like other smaller sunspot groups, AR 2192 is now crossing the Earth-facing side of the Sun and appears dark in visible light because it is cooler than the surrounding surface. Still, the energy stored in the region's twisted magnetic fields is enormous and has already generated powerful explosions, including two X-class solar flares this week. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) associated with the flares have not affected planet Earth, so far. The forecast for further activity from AR 2192 is still significant though, as it swings across the center of the solar disk and Earth-directed CMEs become possible. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141024.html
4. Stephen Sekula (steve@chirp.cooleysekula.net)'s status on Sunday, 28-Sep-2014 13:36:04 UTC Stephen Sekula
   RT from Astronomy Picture of the Day https://pump.jpope.org/apod: APOD: 2014 September 28 - Two Black Holes Dancing in 3C 75 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140928.html [3c75_chandraNRAO_960.jpg] http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140928.html Image Link http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1409/3c75_chandraNRAO_576.jpg What's happening at the center of active galaxy 3C 75? The two bright sources at the center of this composite x-ray (blue)/ radio (pink) image are co-orbiting supermassive black holes powering the giant radio source 3C 75. Surrounded by multimillion degree x-ray emitting gas, and blasting out jets of relativistic particles the supermassive black holes are separated by 25,000 light-years. At the cores of two merging galaxies in the Abell 400 galaxy cluster they are some 300 million light-years away. Astronomers conclude that these two supermassive black holes are bound together by gravity in a binary system in part because the jets' consistent swept back appearance is most likely due to their common motion as they speed through the hot cluster gas at 1200 kilometers per second. Such spectacular cosmic mergers are thought to be common in crowded galaxy cluster environments in the distant universe. In their final stages the mergers are expected to be intense sources of gravitational waves. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140928.html
5. Stephen Sekula (steve@chirp.cooleysekula.net)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Sep-2014 13:21:10 UTC Stephen Sekula
   RT from Astronomy Picture of the Day https://pump.jpope.org/apod: APOD: 2014 September 2 - Holometer: A Microscope into Space and Time http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140902.html [holometer_fnal_960.jpg] http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140902.html Image Link http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1409/holometer_fnal_1600.jpg How different are space and time at very small scales? To explore the unfamiliar domain of the miniscule Planck scale -- where normally unnoticeable quantum effects might become dominant -- a newly developed instrument called the Fermilab Holometer has begun operating at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago, Illinois, USA. The instrument seeks to determine if slight but simultaneous jiggles of a mirror in two directions expose a fundamental type of holographic noise that always exceeds a minimum amount. Pictured above is one of the end mirrors of a Holometer prototype. Although the discovery of holographic noise would surely be groundbreaking, the dependence of such noise on a specific laboratory length scale would surprise some spacetime enthusiasts. One reason for this is the Lorentz Invariance postulate of Einstein's special relativity, which states that all length scales should appear contracted to a relatively moving observer -- even the diminutive Planck length. Still, the experiment is unique and many are curious what the results will show. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140902.html