Starship Asterisk*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novella wrote:
<<A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000.

The novella is a common literary genre in several European languages. English language novellas include Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Herman Melville's Billy Budd, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans.

The English word "novella" is derived from the Italian word "novella", feminine of "novello" which means new.

A novella has generally fewer conflicts than novels, yet more complicated ones than short stories. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. They have endings that are located at the brink of change. Unlike novels, they are not divided into chapters, and are often intended to be read at a single sitting, as the short story, although white space is often used to divide the sections. They maintain, therefore, a single effect. Warren Cariou wrote:

The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description.

The idea of serialized novellas dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, from around the 10th century. The novella as a literary genre later began developing in the early Renaissance literary work of the Italians and the French. Principally, by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), author of The Decameron (1353)—one hundred novelle told by ten people, seven women and three men, fleeing the Black Death by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills, in 1348; and by the French Queen, Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549) author of Heptaméron (1559)—seventy-two original French tales (structured like The Decameron).

Not until the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries did writers fashion the novella into a literary genre structured by precepts and rules. Contemporaneously, the Germans were the most active writers of the "Novelle." For the German writer, a novella is a fictional narrative of indeterminate length—a few pages to hundreds—restricted to a single, suspenseful event, situation, or conflict leading to an unexpected turning point (Wendepunkt), provoking a logical, but surprising end; "Novellen" tend to contain a concrete symbol, which is the narration's steady point.>>

“Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”

Ann wrote:This is a very interesting picture, strongly red and blue-green in color balance. I guess that filters aimed at bringing out H-alpha and OIII emission have been used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RX_J0852.0-4622 wrote:
<<RX J0852.0-4622 (also known as G266.2−1.2) is a recently discovered supernova remnant. The distance to this object is controversial, but some scientists argue that the supernova remnant is only 650-700 light years away, and exploded comparatively recently, perhaps within the last 800 years. The remnant is located in the southern sky in the constellation Vela ("sail"), and sits (in projection) inside the much larger and older Vela Supernova Remnant. For this reason, RX J0852.0-4622 is often referred to as Vela Junior. It was found in 1998 when gamma ray emissions from the decay of 44Ti nuclei were discovered using The Imaging Compton Telescope, (COMPTEL).

If the remnant is indeed young and nearby, its corresponding supernova should have been visible from the Earth in about the year 1250. One difficulty with this interpretation is that there are no contemporary written reports of any supernova at that time or in that part of the sky.>>

Ann wrote:This is a very interesting picture, strongly red and blue-green in color balance. I guess that filters aimed at bringing out H-alpha and OIII emission have been used.

ann wrote: I guess that filters bringing out H-Alpa and OIII emission have been used

beyond wrote:Ann, i take it that the OIII is not the same OIII we have on earth after a thunder shower?? If it was, i should think that space would smell really good, almost Heavenly With all the dust in space and the explosions and things that go on out there, i should think it would smell more like the inside of a vacuum claener

mexhunter wrote:According to the author's own filters and time involved are:
Ha (920m) OIII (890) R (160m) G (160m) B (160m)

emc wrote:

• “Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were
  the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea wrote:
<<The Old Man and the Sea recounts an epic battle of wills between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin said to be the largest catch of his life. It opens by explaining that the fisherman, who is named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching any fish at all. He is apparently so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, feeding him and discussing American baseball—most notably Santiago's idol, Joe DiMaggio....

A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached.
One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet from nose to tail. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark.

Ann wrote:It would have been fun if there had been an arrow pointing out the general location of the Vela pulsar.

Case wrote:

Ann wrote:It would have been fun if there had been an arrow pointing out the general location of the Vela pulsar.

No obvious visual counterpart in the image, but the pulsar's coordinates say it should be at the crosshairs:

emc wrote:Today’s APOD reminded me of an old man looking out to sea… perhaps a likeness of an upside down Abraham Simpson… what’s in a name though. You know, life is in the details… details make it interesting and challenging and… fun! And life’s rewards are best served by the rich… rich in heart, rich in spirit. Neufer, you are both.

biddie67 wrote:The APOD paragraph mentions that the Vela Supernova remnant is approximently 800 LY away and that the light from the original supernova explosion reached Earth 11,000 years ago. I'm trying to get my head around something here.

The supernova actually occured around 11,800 years ago and the current blue light in the photograph has arrived here already being 800 Years old. What I find interesting is that the charge to the shocked filaments of glowing gas was so intense that it is still visible after 11,000 years.

Ann wrote:

biddie67 wrote:
The APOD paragraph mentions that the Vela Supernova remnant is approximately 800 LY away and that the light from the original supernova explosion reached Earth 11,000 years ago. I'm trying to get my head around something here. The supernova actually occured around 11,800 years ago and the current blue light in the photograph has arrived here already being 800 Years old.

Biddie, I'm not too sure that I understand these things too well myself. But think of it like this. The supernova explosion happened 11,000 years ago, and if the star that exploded was 800 light-years away from us 11,000 years ago, which isn't certain since that star has a proper motion in space which is not the same as the Sun's, then the light from that supernova would have reached us about 10,200 years ago.

Vela pulsar 89 ms cycle of gamma rays