Milky Way From Lake Cuyamaca Js

Island Point Milky Way

Nikon d5100 - 6 x 25s - ISO 4000 - f2.8 - 16mm

First, a bit of background - I have lived with a girl for 4 years after putting an ad out online. She pays her bills and is never there at the weekends, while I’m rarely there during the week. However - she is unbelievably lazy, selfish and messy (imagine those shock images of student houses and you’re not far off).

I’ve spent 4 years getting petty revenge on my flat mate in the most passive aggressive ways possible. My objective is for her to never realise I’m responsible. Here is story number 1:

The Offence: Christmas 2014. I have bought 6 bottles of wine for my Nan at a cost of around £30/bottle. Before I can gift them, I return home one night to find she and her boyfriend have helped themselves to one of the bottles…

HER: “Oh I had one of your bottles of wine. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll replace it.

ME: "Errr… Ok. Right.”

Bottle is replaced with Sainsbury’s Basics Red Table Wine at approximately £3 in value. Was given the replacement the night before I was due to travel to my Nan’s leaving me with half a present and a disappointed grandmother.

Petty Revenge: For over 2 years now, I have been sealing all of her bottles and jars with gorilla glue before she opens them for the first time. Tomato ketchup? Gorilla glue. Laundry detergent? Gorilla glue. All those bottles of nail polish just left lying around on the hallway floor? Gorilla glue. I’m a regular maestro when it comes to gorilla gluing things without leaving any evidence.

I gorilla glued her light bulb in to its socket so when it blew, she needed to replace the whole lamp. I gorilla glued the windscreen washer fluid cap on to her car. I gorilla glued the caps on to all the pens she bought when she got in to that adult colouring-in phase.

So far she’s invested in 3 automatic jar openers to no avail and thrown away dozens of items. It’s never been mentioned to me and I assume she thinks she’s just weak and this is normal.

White Ibis (Eudocimus albus) at Sunset

Lido Key Beach, FL

Bedroom view from Paranal Residencia

The view from one of the Paranal Residencia bedroom balconies reveals the magnificent view afforded by the remote location in the Chilean Atacama desert. Numerous rust-tinted peaks give way to the sea and, eventually, dark skies that host the unmistakable glow and dust lanes of the Milky Way.

Credit: Jean-Marc Lecleire/PNA/ESO

VLT Snaps An Exotic Exoplanet “First”

Astronomers hunt for planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets) using a variety of methods. One successful method is direct imaging; this is particularly effective for planets on wide orbits around young stars, because the light from the planet is not overwhelmed by light from the host star and is thus easier to spot. This image demonstrates this technique. It shows a T-Tauri star named CVSO 30, located approximately 1200 light-years away from Earth in the 25 Orionis group (slightly northwest of Orion’s famous Belt). In 2012, astronomers found that CVSO 30 hosted one exoplanet (CVSO 30b) using a detection method known as transit photometry, where the light from a star observably dips as a planet travels in front of it. Using the data astronomers have imaged what is likely to be a second planet! To produce the image, astronomers exploited the astrometry provided by VLT’s NACO and SINFONI instruments. This new exoplanet, named CVSO 30c, is the small dot to the upper left of the frame (the large blob is the star itself). While the previously-detected planet, CVSO 30b, orbits very close to the star, whirling around CVSO 30 in just under 11 hours at an orbital distance of 0.008 astronomical units, CVSO 30c orbits significantly further out, at a distance of 660 au, taking a staggering 27 000 years to complete a single orbit. (For reference, the planet Mercury orbits the Sun at an average distance of 0.39 au, while Neptune sits at just over 30 au.) If it is confirmed that CVSO 30c orbits CVSO 30, this would be the first star system to host both a close-in exoplanet detected by the transit method and a far-out exoplanet detected by direct imaging. Astronomers are still exploring how such an exotic system came to form in such a short timeframe, as the star is only 2.5 million years old; it is possible that the two planets interacted at some point in the past, scattering off one another and settling in their current extreme orbits.

Credit: ESO/Schmidt et al.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius Aurora over Kirkjufell, Iceland captured by the always awe-inspiring Sean Parker.

Horsehead Nebula 

Next level backyard astrophotography!

“Amateur astrophotographer David Ellison captured this image **from his backyard** in Chattanooga, Tenn. Located approximately 1,500 light years from Earth in the constellation Orion, the Horsehead Nebula is simple to spot due to its unique shape resembling a horse’s head. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). This image is a narrow band photograph of four hours of exposure using a QSI camera and a 4-inch telescope. The star seen just above the Flame nebula is Alnitak. Goodnight, Earthlings! Credit and Copyright: David Ellison.“

A spectacular video showing climbers going through Mt. Rainier. (Video)

I’d love to be here. 

A nebulous sky

The incredibly dark and transparent sky of Paranal, in the Atacama Desert, Chile, is the perfect place to see the bright emission of various nebulae. The white dome of the Residencia occupies the bottom of the image. La Residencia hosts those working at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. The hotel represents an oasis in the dry and harsh conditions of the Chilean Atacama desert.

Credit: ESO/M. Claro

Olympics Meme