#Astronomical Databases

[planetariumhub]

Unveiling the Cosmic Remnant: Exploring the Crab Nebula (M1)

Credits: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University) Among the fascinating remnants of stellar explosions, the Crab Nebula, also known as Messier 1 (M1), stands as a testament to the immense forces that shape our universe. Located in the constellation Taurus, this celestial spectacle has captivated astronomers and enthusiasts alike for centuries. In this article, we embark on a…

[markscherz]

Natural history museums hold innumerable misidentified specimens on their shelves. These specimens make their way into databases like GBIF, and muddy data that is used in global-scale analyses and other research drawing on such records. Careful verification of all specimens in a collection holding tens to hundreds of thousands of specimens would be a Herculean task that could take a dozen experts a decade. So, we often rely on spot checks.

Whilst searching our constrictor collection to see if we have any albino snakes (we don’t seem to), I came across this snake that had been identified as a Boa constrictor. It is in fact Malayopython reticulatus, a reticulated python. A quick new label and an update in our database, and I was able to move it over to the right shelf. Now it won’t muddy the waters further, and is able to be referred to by anyone interested in examining a retic.

How many more such cases are haunting our shelves of over 14 million objects? And that’s just the Natural History Museum of Denmark; there are billions of objects in similar collections globally. This is quite literally an astronomically huge problem.

[mindblowingscience]

If we discover alien life, what will it  look like?  We have no way of knowing, but the hunt for extraterrestrial life can now include purple bacteria, according to a group of astronomers who are recording the chemical makeup unique to the lavender-hued organisms. These microbes may have dominated Earth early on in our planet's history and are well-suited to emerge on faraway worlds that circle dim red stars smaller than our sun, a new study suggests. The latest cataloging effort is in part "to create a database for signs of life to make sure our telescopes don't miss life if it happens not to look exactly like what we encounter around us every day," study co-author Lisa Kaltenegger of Cornell University said in a statement. "Purple bacteria can survive and thrive under such a variety of conditions that it is easy to imagine that on many different worlds, purple may just be the new green."

Continue Reading.

[enneegon]

i woke up to a massive fucking SURGE of notifs on my dash, hello funky space iterator enjoyers

i come bearing LORE!!! (very long read i'm sorry i wanted to rant)

so this guys full name is Hollow Intercession, Falling Space, All Mundane Order Towards Unawakened Discovery/HIFSAMOTUD (or just Discovery).

the astronomically (pun intended) long name is to celebrate their successful launch!! there were at least fourteen other failures before them

component-wise:

roughly ten times the size of a regular iterator (still deciding on the scale!)

solar-powered

four sets of wings (for moving in zero g)

vacuums to suck out biological waste and prevent slag buildup

massive communication arrays

overseers are used to photograph

personality wise they're actually extremely goofy, really outgoing and concerningly likeable. like they are so fucking silly. could definitely make any iterator laugh. cannot be serious for the life of them

purpose wise, they still worked on the great problem but were also tasked with researching space eg. taking pictures, sampling matter, naming planets.

(think big satellite or massive james webb telescope except the ancient version)

and STORY WISE

HIFSAMOTUD worked on their given tasks for a very short time after taking one look at the earth and going 'why the fuck do i have to be stationary and work on the great problem when you have all of them'

after MULTIPLE reminders HIFSAMOTUD just goes 'lmao no you gave me wings', breaks out of orbit and flies thousands of kilometres into space until the ancients completely lost connection with them. because of this, their model is discontinued in fear of this situation ever happening again <3

long after the ancients have all ascended HIFSAMOTUD floats their way back and makes a distress signal in hopes of contacting someone again - to their shock getting the attention of hundreds of iterators, all in different situations but being broken down by time.

HIFSAMOTUD, being in deep space where there is no oxygen for erosion, gets very concerned for their ground iterator friends.

they were already a massive communication system from the start, but they go off to rewrite some of their genomes so they can reprogram themselves. (and it goes surprisingly well! probably because they don't have resources to share with anyone and they told all their friends to shut the fuck up and leave them to focus)

they reprogram their coms to be a full global system for the iterators (invented discord) and use it to reconnect with older iterators and as a system where all the other iterators can communicate with each other. sorta like a server host!!

they also made a database for the iterators (registration) so they know who has been contacted and/or uses their system.

this is when the group of 'discoverists' form!! these are iterators who HIFSAMOTUD has registered on their database (in this au fp and lttm are discoverists!) discoverists are all anonymous and are given new aliases by HIFSAMOTUD - this can either be based on a role, or HIFSAMOTUD names them something space related based on their name or puppet colour, eg. OPERATOR, LIFEGIVER (roles) MOONLIGHT, NEBULA (colours) etc etc

these guys either don't work on the great problem, are massive space nerds, crave social interaction, are just here to fuck around or all of the above :)

[acti-veg]

doesn’t genocide mean you have to be *intentionally* trying to wipe out an ethnic group though? what is the evidence for that?

I feel like I've already covered this point in the answer you're responding to here, but I'll expand on it if it helps. If you are looking for Netanyahu to come out and say 'hey we are trying to wipe out the Palestinian people in whole or in part' before you'll call this a genocide then you'll never identify any genocide until it is already completed.

Unless someone announces their intentions, you can only infer those intentions by their actions. Intention is the thing everyone is waving around and saying ‘you can��t prove they’re wiping out Palestinians intentionally’ but this principle of inferring intention by evidence is well grounded in both national and international law. That’s how you try someone for murder without them admitting they killed someone intentionally.

Israel is one of the most powerful militaries in the world, with highly advanced targeting systems and weapons supplied by Western powers. Yet still, the majority of people they are killing are civilians. So one of three things are happening: They are not capable of avoiding astronomical civilian losses while waging war, they do not think avoiding civilian losses is important, or they are targeting civilians intentionally. In any case, a responsible global power that did not think that that level of loss of life was acceptable would cease their aggression, or at the very least, stop bombing a densely populated civilian area indiscriminately. By the way, many Israeli officials, decision-makers and military personnel absolutely have expressed genocidal intentions. You can find a database of about 500+ of them here, with sources for every one of them. You can never wholly prove intent without admission, but honestly, it is hard to think of many historical examples where genocidal intentions had such a large evidentiary basis while the conflict is still ongoing as we have for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

[im-your-new-quartermaster]

what’re your top 5 benthan hcs? :)

thanks for the ask :D narrowing it down to 5 was quite the task, but here we are -

ethan pining over benji, good god‼️ it’s gotten to the point where ethan will call ilsa up (when it’s 2 am in london) and ramble about how benji’s hands accidentally brushed against his during a mission (ilsa has sleep deprivation at this point)

ethan has this entire notebook filled with random sketches of benji, (ghost protocol callback?) it helps when he’s separated from him and somehow drawing him calms ethan down and makes him feel better when he’s missing benji

(bonus: luther somehow finds the notebook and he’s like - ethan. you are down astronomically bad‼️)

ethan has a major competency kink💀 he sees benji seamlessly hack into the live camera feeds and elevator databases of the world’s most secure network like it’s nothing and he’ll get turned on😭😭

also, when ethan witnesses benji shooting someone for the first time. hoooo boy is it gettin hot in here

their love language is sharing music <3 benji secretly learns ethan’s favourite songs on the guitar and surprises him, benji serenades ethan while the latter rests his head on benji’s shoulder and whispers the lyrics along (AAAAAAAAAA)

and when ethan finally decides to propose to benji, the ENTIRE team joins in on the plan - luther goes ring hunting with ethan, luther and will create a diversion on the DAY, and when benji says yes ilsa and jane burst in with champagne and cheers <33 (everyone ends up crying)

[obearvatory]

Completed Crab Nebula

The photo above is my first ever fully completed photo in astrophotography. Thanks to the help of GIMP, I was able to do all the necessary steps to allow me to start my journey in Astro-photography.

Thankfully, the astronomy database had pre-calibrated images of the crab nebula from January 5th, 2020. This allowed me to skip the drawn-out process of calibrating images. What does that mean? Calibrating images involves adjusting and standardizing the colors, brightness, accuracy, and consistency within an image. This process ensures that the red, blue, green, and luminance layers look consistent. Not only does calibration help with consistency, but it also sets the brightness and contrast to allow clear visibility while also preventing images from being either too dark or too bright.

So, if I didn’t calibrate the images, what did I do? I went over a lot of what I did to this image in another post “Work in Progress Crab Nebula.” However, I’ll roughly go over what I did to the image overall.

After other astronomers calibrated the crab nebula photos and made them available to me in the database, I took the red, blue, green, and luminance images and converted them onto GIMP. This made the different filters into different layers.

From there I adjusted the brightness and color contrast of each layer. This allows for the brighter pixels in the images (which happen to be stars) to become brighter without brightening the far dark pixels (the space behind and/ or in between the stars.)

Since all the images are layered on top of each other, I can only see the images that are layered first. To combat this, I needed to change the opacity of each layer. This allowed me to see all the colored images at once.

Another adjustment needs to be made. Now that all the images were shown together, I could see that they were not all lined up. To line up each of the images I had to search each layer and find the most notable star that was the same in each image.

It doesn’t end there; however, Since I wanted to get more of the intricate details within the nebula itself, I turned up the brightness of the image. This allowed me to see more of the stars in the galaxies and a larger array of colors as well. Not only did turning up the brightness affect the stars, but I could now see more dust clouds along with red lines streaking through.

I wasn’t a fan of how reddish/ brownish the image looked and decided to change the brightness of the red layer and the green layer. I lowered the red layer, getting rid of the reddish/brownish hue over the image. In turn, I enhanced the green layer and slightly the blue to allow more of a cool colored finish without taking away from the red stars and the redness inside of the nebula.

[cliriqstars]

This panoramic view of the entire sky reveals the distribution of galaxies beyond our Milky Way galaxy, which astronomers call extended sources, as observed by Two Micron All-Sky Survey. The image is constructed from a database of over 1.6 million galaxies listed in the survey's Extended Source Catalog; more than half of the galaxies have never before been catalogued. The image is a representation of the relative brightnesses of these million-plus galaxies, all observed at a wavelength of 2.2 microns. The brightest and nearest galaxies are represented in blue, and the faintest, most distant ones are in red. This color scheme gives insights into the three dimensional large-scale structure of the nearby universe with the brightest, closest clusters and superclusters showing up as the blue and bluish-white features. The dark band in this image shows the area of the sky where our Milky Way galaxy blocks our view of distant objects, which, in this projection, lies predominantly along the edges of the image.

[sidekickjoey]

You're On Your Own, Kid (You Can Face This)

Graphics & writing by: @sidekickjoey Beta: @steddieasitgoes Art by: @ja0netholmes/@bittlebarnes and @danadaria Part of @steddiebang 2023

Read on Ao3

A week out from Robin leaving and everything about his world changing, Steve finds himself both closer and impossibly further away from knowing what his future holds.

Chapter 5 - Pick The Petals (preview under the cut)

It’s a week out from Robin leaving for Connecticut, and Steve still hasn’t asked Eddie.

It’s rather upsetting, knowing he needs to do something but feeling so physically incapable of doing so. Steve has wrestled with the feeling for some time now, waking with it haunting him like a ghost and hearing its taunts as he falls asleep in Robin’s spare bed and his colder one back home. He isn't even really sure what he is so afraid of, which complicates things astronomically. Asking Eddie a simple question that would solve all of his problems with one yes shouldn’t be scary. If anything, doing so as soon as possible should be something he jumps to do, just to end his suffering.

And yet, Steve can’t bring himself to do it.

At the beginning of this torment, when Robin let him go free from her house, he had claimed he needed to wait a bit. He couldn’t just up and leave Hawkins in the middle of his spat with his parents and expect to not be followed like a hawk, after all. It would be better, he reckoned, to wait. An unsuspecting foe is better than one on guard. Robin had reluctantly agreed, and with a pinky-swear promise that he’d get to leaving eventually, he was let off. 

By day three, when Robin revived the conversation moments before handing in her resignation letter to Keith, Steve had changed his story. His new claim was that he was waiting to see Eddie to make the first move. ‘Can’t ask the guy something if he isn’t around, you know?’ Robin’s eyes had never rolled quite so far into her head, especially given Steve not only had Eddie’s number in his possession, but also access to it in the Family Video database before him. But, she held her tongue, and Steve held on to his excuses. 

The weekend should have been where all excuses ran out. Eddie was among a number of close friends invited over for a movie night at the Wheeler household, as was Steve. The guy most definitely would be present and available for Steve to talk to about this, or really anything for that matter. However, despite Eddie casting curious looks his way and trying to start up conversations about how he’s doing, practically begging for an in, Steve managed to not go through with asking him. He let Eddie go, leaving his future slip perpetually back in limbo and refusing to do anything else. 

Now, he knows he is only a matter of hours, not days, from his hesitancy becoming a problem. He knows his friends are slowly but surely on their way out. He knows that his window to head out with them, and to do so with Eddie by his side, is slipping away like they are. Nancy and Jonathan had even brought up leaving earlier than planned at the movie night. Argyle wants to go sight-seeing with them before all three end up muddled with work and responsibilities for ‘the man,’ as he put it. Jonathan doesn’t want to leave him hanging, especially when his ticket to NYU is sitting in his drawer placing a ticking clock on their in-person friendship. Nancy is too kind to let him do so, so it’s as good of a done deal as any.

Robin is set to leave on Friday. Her parents, ever adamant about following their only daughter off to her new start, are eager to take their time and move her into her new dorm room together. Steve is grateful to know she won’t be all on her own to do so. However, he also knows this means he's only got a few days left to figure things out with her around and, sue him, he's not ready to lose her yet. He wants to sit down and plan with her like the entire party used to plan for Vecna. He wants to make sure with her that everything is air-tight about his plan so that he won't screw up his words and scare Eddie off. The thought of going into all of that alone is enough to keep him up at night. Unsurprisingly, it does. He mourns her absence before it even comes and, worse then, neglects to reach out to her for fear he may never let her leave.

All his worries, fears, and stressors come to a head on Monday afternoon, when Steve is fresh off of a stint at Family Video. The day had been a hectic one, filled with a few large parties of middle schoolers looking to rent out any movie they could get their grubby little hands on. With Robin gone, Steve had been the only one around to fend them off. After nearly losing his voice ordering them around and threatening baselessly to quit more than five times, he's exhausted. He wants nothing more when he arrives home than to feel the sweet embrace of a shower and the comfort of a quiet bedroom, away from anyone and anything that could bother him. As such, he doesn't think twice about pushing inside his home and running up the stairs to it. 

His mother, however, does. 

[androgynousbirdtale]

James Webb telescope reveals gargantuan 'Mothra' star in most colorful image of the universe ever taken.

By Jamie Carter published 2 days ago

The James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have combined forces to image a cluster of galaxies 4.3 billion light-years away in one of the most colorful pictures of the universe ever taken.

NASA has combined the power of its two premier space telescopes to produce one of the most colorful and comprehensive views of the universe ever.

We see an array of twinkling yellow, red, and blue galaxies stretched across space in a way that is reminiscent of Christmas lights.

Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Hubble Space Telescope to collect light in different wavelengths, a new, combined image reveals a parade of stars and galaxies within the massive galaxy cluster MACS0416, 4.3 billion light-years from the solar system. While JWST detects infrared light invisible to humans, Hubble detects visible light; the resulting panchromatic image creates colors that help astronomers measure vast cosmic distances.

For example, a landscape of galaxies in blue and red can be seen surrounding the yellowish line of lights that make up MACS0416. The bluest galaxies, which mostly come from Hubble's data, are both the closest to Earth and the busiest hotbeds of star formation. The redder galaxies are much dustier and farther away. They're the work of JWST's infrared instruments, which can detect heat signatures through dust clouds.

The image also includes concentric circles curving around MACS0416. They're actually objects far behind, magnified by MACS0416's gravitational field. This gravitational lensing occurs when a massive foreground object distorts the space around it and bends the light from objects behind it. The result of this chance alignment is often referred to as a "cosmic magnifying glass," which both reveals and magnifies objects. One of those magnified objects in the new image is an enormous star, nicknamed "Mothra." It's being magnified by a factor of at least 4,000 times, according to NASA.

"We're calling MACS0416 the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, both because it's so colorful and because of these flickering lights we find within it," said Haojing Yan, professor of astronomy at the University of Missouri and lead author of a new paper describing the results, said in a NASA statement. The paper, available on the preprint database arXiv, has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.The image could be the first of many like it. Since 2014, Hubble has been busy imaging the faintest and youngest galaxies ever detected. And JWST is now adding valuable data about the early universe.

"The whole picture doesn't become clear until you combine Webb data with Hubble data," Rogier Windhorst, professor of astronomy at Arizona State University and principal investigator of the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science (PEARLS) program, which took the Webb observations, said in the statement. "We are building on Hubble's legacy by pushing to greater distances and fainter objects." While Hubble images took 122 hours to produce, JWST's — collected nine years after Hubble's — took just 22 hours.

[pandorias-box]

Chloris…

Hmm.

The usual holder of this account has that same surname.

That certainly is a coincidence. Unless…

I may have to search my genetic database in order to discern whether or not I actually have a connection to the typical user. Chloris is a somewhat common surname for Megolaians, Nihili, and hybrids, but the chances of someone bearing the same name whilst also being a Nadelan hybrid are astronomically low…

Perhaps this was, or rather is, the personal account of one of my ancestors considering our similarities. If that is the case, this is truly fascinating.

[planetariumhub]

The Majestic Eagle Nebula (M16): Unveiling the Stellar Sculptor

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) In the depths of the cosmos lies a breathtaking celestial masterpiece known as the Eagle Nebula, or Messier 16 (M16). Located in the constellation Serpens, this nebula has captivated astronomers and stargazers with its stunning beauty and unique features. In this article, we will embark on a journey to explore the enigmatic Eagle…

[thoughtlessarse]

A Saskatchewan farmer’s near miss with potentially lethal debris falling from orbit highlights the skyrocketing risks and murky politics of space junk The e-mail arrived, like a bolt from blue, on the otherwise typical Thursday afternoon of May 9. The message was from a journalist, asking me, an astronomer, for an interview about a farmer who had reportedly found space junk while prepping his fields for springtime seeding, just an hour’s drive from my home in Saskatchewan. “Yeah, right,” I said to myself as I tapped out my affirmative reply. The odds are already long for any particular place on Earth to be struck by orbital debris—so the chances for it to happen practically in the backyard of someone like me who studies the issue felt astronomically low, simply too far-fetched to be true. A quick check of my news feed proved me wrong. One of the top stories was about the space junk strike, and even included a photo of the farmer, Barry Sawchuk, standing next to what looked like the charred, battered hood of a semitruck covered with woven carbon fiber and a few slightly melted aluminum protrusions. My jaw dropped in shock: The object looked exactly like debris that fell in an Australian sheep field in 2022, which the U.S. aerospace company SpaceX later admitted was part of a cargo trunk for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. This “trunk” is actually the size of a small grain silo, and is ejected in orbit well before the spacecraft’s atmospheric reentry, to naturally and chaotically reenter on its own and, supposedly, burn up completely. To confirm my hunch, I immediately e-mailed my collaborator Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, who maintains probably the best public database of launches, reentries and other space activities. McDowell responded within minutes, forwarding a graphic tracing the path of a SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk ejected by the Axiom 3 private astronaut mission that had reentered over the Canadian prairies on February 26, 2024. My hunch was confirmed.

continue reading

It's only a matter of time before someone dies.

[mindblowingscience]

Using data from the Spitzer space observatory, Dr. Susana Iglesias-Groth, a researcher from The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has found evidence for the existence of the amino acid tryptophan in the interstellar material in a nearby star-forming region. The research is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. High amounts of tryptophan were detected in the Perseus molecular complex, specifically in the IC348 star system, a star-forming region that lies 1,000 light years away from Earth—relatively close in astronomical terms. The region is generally invisible to the naked eye, but shines brightly when viewed in infrared wavelengths. Tryptophan is one of the 20 amino acids essential for the formation of key proteins for life on Earth, and produces one of the richest pattern of spectral lines in the infrared. It was therefore an obvious candidate to be explored using the extensive spectroscopic database of the Spitzer satellite, a space-based infrared telescope.

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[tigersharktheautisticseawing]

Wierd helluva boss AU I just thoguth of (it's consuming me)

Basically, everything is the same, very canon compliant, but during the fire Blitzø lost an eye, specifically the one on the scarred side of his face

Now, he would be less effective with guns, since from what I heard once you lose an eye your depth perception goes to fuck itself and I'm pretty sure it's important for shooting and aiming guns, but if I'm wrong correct me

Now, he could go either of 3 directions:

(my favorite) He wears a sick-ass eyepatch 24/7, only ever taking it off to wash his face. Even Loona doesn't know he's disabled in the eye department. Everyone just assumed he was doing it for the vibes. Now, the outing of his disability could go two routes in this scenario • The Stolitz route Basically goes kinda like Crooked, they argue a bit, Blitzø has low self worth, Stolas says something, and Blitzø goes "because this is who I am!" or some bullshit and pulls of his eyepatch, to reveal that there's nothing behind it • The IMP route Moxxie: Umm, Sir, why are you wearing that eyepatch all the time? wouldn't it be better for fighting if you took it off? Blitzø: Oh I WISH! *pulls of eyepatch to reveal empty eye socket* Moxxie: *shooketh*

2. Protethic eye

Basically, just an eye, to put in his eyesocket to make him seem normal.

In this case, it goes like this

Blitzø: *misses target* Goddamn it, this would be easier without my eye issues!

Moxxie: Sir, may I suggest some glasses?

Blitzø: Aprecciate the thought Moxxie, but this shit won't be fixed by glasses! *pulls out prostethic eye mid-battle*

Moxxie: What the fuck-

3. Just plain ol' empty eye socket

No covering it up. Nothing. Just empty eye.

That woud make for a fun scene i ep. 7 tho, so even though it's my least fav it's still a fun idea to consider

Also, consider:

If Stolas found out about his disability, he would definetely ask for a fully functional prostethic eye along with a crystal. Like, Oz already makes limb protethics, and really advanced ones at that, so he probably has some kind of working robo-eyes for astronomical prices on the factory tape.

And, smol bonus, if Ozzie gave Stolas that eye for Blitz, he would totally have the eye do cool-ass tricks, like change colors or see super good or like be contected to a database like in Iron Man.

That would definetely make Full Moon much more interesting, and maybe help Blitz understand what's going on, since Stolas just giving him the crystal could be understood as trying to get rid of him, but ordering him a custom fucking actually working prostethic eye?*Not so much

So yeah, do whatever you want with this AU, just wanted to get this man outta my system, may edit screenshots/draw him without that eye

Anyway bye bye!

[merelygifted]

Scientists discover massive 'extragalactic structure' behind the Milky Way | Live Science

An uncharted region of space known as the "zone of avoidance" lurks behind the Milky Way's center – and astronomers just found an enormous, multi-galaxy structure there

Astronomers have detected an enormous extragalactic structure hiding in an uncharted region of space far beyond the Milky Way's center.

This phantom region, known as the zone of avoidance, is a blank spot on our map of the universe, comprising somewhere between 10% and 20% of the night sky. The reason we can't see it — at least with standard visible light telescopes — is because the Milky Way's bulging center blocks our view of it; the center of our galaxy is so dense with stars, dust and other matter that light from the zone of avoidance gets scattered or absorbed before reaching Earth's telescopes.

However, researchers have had better luck uncovering the zone's secrets with telescopes that can detect infrared radiation — a type of energy that's invisible to human eyes, but powerful enough to shine through dense clouds of gas and dust. Infrared surveys of the zone of avoidance have found evidence of thousands of individual galaxies shining through the cosmic fog, though little is known about the large-scale structures that lurk there.

Now, researchers have combined data from several of those infrared surveys to reveal the most colossal structure ever detected in the zone of avoidance, according to a study published Oct. 28 on the preprint database arXiv.org. (This study has not yet been peer reviewed, though it has been submitted for review to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics).

Located approximately 3 billion light-years from Earth, the mysterious structure appears to be a large cluster of galaxies drawn together by a shared center of gravity. Using observations from the VVV Survey — a survey that studies the Milky Way's central bulge at infrared wavelengths using the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy in Chile — the study authors found evidence of at least 58 galaxies bundled together in a small plot of the zone of avoidance.  ...