APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

[APOD Robot]

A Light and Dusty Night

Explanation: Posing as a brilliant evening star, Venus lies near the western horizon in this southern hemisphere, early spring, night skyscape. To create the composite view exposures tracking the sky and fixed for the foreground were taken on September 25 from Cascavel in southern Brazil. In view after sunset, Venus appears immersed in a cone of zodiacal light, sunlight scattered from dust along the Solar System's ecliptic plane. In fact from either hemisphere of planet Earth, zodiacal light is most visible after sunset near a spring equinox, (or before sunrise near an autumn equinox) when its luminous arc lies at steep angles to the horizon. Extending above the sunset on this night, the zodiacal light reaches toward rich starfields and immense interstellar dust clouds in the bulge of the central Milky Way. Follow along the Milky Way from the central bulge back toward the horizon and you'll spot the closest star system to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, a mere 4.37 light-years away.

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[orin stepanek]

In actuality Mars is more a serine type planet
and Venus is more harsh!

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Apollo 10's Lunar Module: SNOOPY. Snoopy's ascent stage is the only flown LM known to have survived intact (in a heliocentric orbit : possibly asteroid 2018 AV2)

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<<"It was a dark and stormy night." is an often-mocked and parodied phrase considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose. The status of the sentence as an archetype for bad writing comes from the first phrase of the opening sentence (incipit) of English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The Peanuts comic strip character Snoopy, in his imagined persona as the World Famous Author, sometimes begins his novels with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night." Cartoonist Charles Schulz made Snoopy use this phrase because "it was a cliché, and had been one for a very long time". A book by Schulz, titled It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Snoopy, and credited to Snoopy as author, was published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1971.

It is the opening line in the popular 1962 novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. L'Engle biographer Leonard Marcus notes that "With a wink to the reader, she chose for the opening line of A Wrinkle in Time, her most audaciously original work of fiction, that hoariest of cliches ... L'Engle herself was certainly aware of old warhorse's literary provenance as ... Edward Bulwer-Lytton's much maligned much parodied repository of Victorian purple prose, Paul Clifford.">>

[ta152h0]

A mere 4.3 light years away? That is a long ways, even at 32,000 mph that New Horizon's Space Craft is traveling at. It would require generations of humans and a complete support system that includes a higher degree of education. Now how are you going to do that? Pass the ice cold one.

[neufer]

A mere 4.3 light years away? That is a long ways, even at 32,000 mph that New Horizon's Space Craft is traveling at. It would require generations of humans and a complete support system that includes a higher degree of education. Now how are you going to do that? Pass the ice cold one.

"MERE" is a standard APOD "tell/prosodic cue" for sarcasm

<<In English, sarcasm is often telegraphed with kinesic/prosodic cues by speaking more slowly and with a lower pitch. Similarly, Dutch uses a lowered pitch; sometimes to such an extent that the expression is reduced to a "MERE" mumble.

Sarcasm is the use of words usually used to either mock or annoy someone, or for humorous purposes. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection with which it is spoken or, with an undercurrent of irony, by the extreme disproportion of the comment to the situation, and is largely context-dependent.

The word comes from the Greek σαρκασμός (sarkasmós) which is taken from σαρκάζειν (sarkázein) meaning "to tear flesh, bite the lip in rage, sneer". It is first recorded in English in 1579, in an annotation to The Shepheardes Calender by Edmund Spenser: Tom piper, an ironicall Sarcasmus, spoken in derision of these rude wits, whych ...>>

[johnnydeep]

This is crying out for annotation. At least to point out Alpha Centauri. I couldn't be sure even with the help of a star map. And I'm sure Ann likes all those nice "blueberries" peppering the sky...

[orin stepanek]

This is crying out for annotation. At least to point out Alpha Centauri. I couldn't be sure even with the help of a star map. And I'm sure Ann likes all those nice "blueberries" peppering the sky...

Not what you wanted?

[ta152h0]

Humorous! pass the ice cold one

[orin stepanek]

Humorous! pass the ice cold one

Where is the humor?

[alter-ego]

Humorous! pass the ice cold one

Where is the humor?

I found the breadth of humor tends to be more encompassing as the number of cold ones increase...

[johnnydeep]

This is crying out for annotation. At least to point out Alpha Centauri. I couldn't be sure even with the help of a star map. And I'm sure Ann likes all those nice "blueberries" peppering the sky...

ProximaPlanet_ESO_960.jpg

Not what you wanted?

Nope. That is AN annotated picture that shows Alpha Centauri, but it's not an annotated version of THIS APOD picture. I have yet to be able to use your pic or any other to find Alpha Centauri - or Crux for that matter - in this pic.

[neufer]

That is AN annotated picture that shows Alpha Centauri, but it's not an annotated version of THIS APOD picture. I have yet to be able to use your pic or any other to find Alpha Centauri - or Crux for that matter - in this pic.

Alpha & Beta Centauri hover over Paranal Observatory (looking WEST)

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The Coalsack with the Southern Cross above Paranal Observatory (looking EAST)

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The Emu in the sky (a constellation defined by dark clouds rather than stars). The Emu's head is the Coalsack with the Southern Cross directly above.

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Inca dark cloud constellations in the Mayu (Celestial River, a.k.a the Milky Way). The Southern Cross is above Yutu, while the Llama's eyes are Alpha & Beta Centauri.

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Milky Way's DARK lanes form a Amazon river dolphin pushing Alpha Centauri (south) with its nose.

[johnnydeep]

I give up. The dolphin clue helped a little, and based on brightness, A and B in my annotated pic below would seem to be Alpha and Beta Centauri, but that would mean that the Southern Cross is down to the left of them, but I'll be damned if I can see it. Or am I still looking at everything upside down?

Alpha and Beta Centauri?

[neufer]

I give up. The dolphin clue helped a little, and based on brightness, A and B in my annotated pic below would seem to be Alpha and Beta Centauri, but that would mean that the Southern Cross is down to the left of them, but I'll be damned if I can see it. Or am I still looking at everything upside down?

A & B in your annotated pic are, indeed, Alpha & Beta Centauri with the Southern Cross down to the left of them. You are looking WEST at a Milky Way that basically runs from north to south such that the southern end of it lies to your left. But when you see the Milky Way looking EAST the Southern Cross will lie to the right of Alpha & Beta Centauri.

Whenever you go outside to look at constellations all you have to do to see them "upside down" is to "about face" 180º (... although you may have to wait for a rising constellation in the EAST to set in the WEST for easy "about face" viewing).

[farlightteam]

Bonitas vistas

[geoffrey.landis]

I think in this case "mere" is intended as understatement.

[johnnydeep]

I think in this case "mere" is intended as understatement.

I don't think so. 4.3 lightyears is indeed extremely close by in interstellar / galactic terms.

[Chris Peterson]

I think in this case "mere" is intended as understatement.

I don't think so. 4.3 lightyears is indeed extremely close by in interstellar / galactic terms.

Yup. Not much of the Universe is closer than that.

[johnnydeep]

I think in this case "mere" is intended as understatement.

I don't think so. 4.3 lightyears is indeed extremely close by in interstellar / galactic terms.

Yup. Not much of the Universe is closer than that.

And yet, it's still about 276000 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth is!