Skip to main content

Pop stars

Consider the Butterfly Nebula:

butterfly nebula

I would have thought “Double Jellyfish Nebula” more appropriate, but apparent Jellyfish Nebula was already taken and confusion would ensue.

Now consider the Ant Nebula:

ant nebula

Now consider the Black Widow Nebula:

black widow nebula

Now consider NGC 3079:

ngc 3079

Do y’all see any similarity in structure?

Yet this is a galaxy, not a stellar nebula. If the effects are related, they evidently debugged any scalability issues.

Now here’s a different question about the Rotten Egg nebula:

rotten egg nebula

How did this one get to be so lopsided? All of the other nebulae that have any structure at all seem to be more or less evenly balanced, like Eta Carinae.

eta carinae

There doesn’t seem to be another star involved, so why such dramatic asymmetry?

Finally, there's this one (more pictures and links here):

supernova 1987A

Given the “splatter disc” or ring around the waist of several other nebulae, I suppose something like this was more or less inevitable, but why does the ejecta bunch up like that? Also, this is at the heart of a supernova, not an “ordinary” nova like the others. It could, however, be a relatively neat answer to the problem of planet formation.

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…
Have to confess, I didn’t take them myself. (-:

Popular posts from this blog

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.