#Ted Stryk

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Only 4 spacecraft have ever returned images from Venus’ surface. The world next door doesn’t make it easy, with searing heat and crushing pressure that quickly destroy any lander.

In 1975 and 1982, 4 of the Soviet Union’s Venera probes captured our only images of Venus’ surface. The Veneras, which mean “Venus” in Russian, scanned the surface back and forth to create panoramic images of their surroundings. They revealed yellow skies and cracked, desolate landscapes that were both alien and familiar—views of a world that may have once been like Earth before experiencing catastrophic climate change.

Ted Stryk, a philosophy professor at Roane State Community College in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, specializes in reconstructing images from early space missions. Using data from the Russian Academy of Sciences, he has over time reconstructed the best-possible versions of the original Venera panoramas.

VENUS SURFACE PANORAMA FROM VENERA 9 This 1975 panorama from the Soviet Union's Venera 9 probe includes the first images ever taken from the surface of another planet.Image: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

VENUS SURFACE PANORAMA FROM VENERA 10 The Soviet Union's Venera 10 probe captured this panorama of Venus's surface in 1975.Image: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

VENUS SURFACE PANORAMA FROM VENERA 13 FRONT CAMERA The Soviet Union's Venera 13 probe captured two color panoramas of Venus's surface in 1982. This panorama came from the front camera.Image: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

VENUS SURFACE PANORAMA FROM VENERA 13 REAR CAMERA The Soviet Union's Venera 13 probe captured two color panoramas of Venus's surface in 1982. This panorama came from the rear camera.Image: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

VENUS SURFACE PANORAMA FROM VENERA 14 FRONT CAMERA The Soviet Union's Venera 14 probe captured two color panoramas of Venus's surface in 1982. This panorama came from the front camera.Image: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

VENUS SURFACE PANORAMA FROM VENERA 14 REAR CAMERA The Soviet Union's Venera 14 probe captured two color panoramas of Venus's surface in 1982. This panorama came from the rear camera.Image: Russian Academy of Sciences / Ted Stryk

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

Volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth's moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io's interior gets heated and its surface has become covered with volcanoes. The featured image is from last week's flyby, passing within 12,000 kilometers above the dangerously active world. The surface of Io is covered with sulfur and frozen sulfur dioxide, making it appear yellow, orange and brown. As hoped, Juno flew by just as a volcano was erupting -- with its faint plume visible near the top of the featured image.

Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS; Processing: Ted Stryk & Fernando García Navarro

[apod]

2023 October 23

Moon Io from Spacecraft Juno Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & Copyright: Ted Stryk & Fernando García Navarro

Explanation: There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth's moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io's interior gets heated and its surface has become covered with volcanoes. The featured image is from last week's flyby, passing within 12,000 kilometers above the dangerously active world. The surface of Io is covered with sulfur and frozen sulfur dioxide, making it appear yellow, orange and brown. As hoped, Juno flew by just as a volcano was erupting -- with its faint plume visible near the top of the featured image. Studying Io's volcanoes and plumes helps humanity better understand how Jupiter's complex system of moons, rings, and auroras interact. Juno is scheduled to make two flybys of Io during the coming months that are almost 10 times closer: one in December and another in February 2024.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231023.html

[world-beauty]

Gibbous Europa

Credits: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA, Ted Stryk

[alightinthelantern]

Books read and movies watched in 2024 (January-June): Should you watch/read them?

Poetry:

In the Next Galaxy (Ruth Stone): No

Selected Poems (Mark Strand): No

In the Dark (Ruth Stone): Yes!

Response (Juliana Spahr): Yes

The Unicorn (Anne Morrow Lindbergh): No!

Everything Else in the World (Stephen Dunn): Yes

Words Under the Words (Naomi Shihab Nye): Eh

On Love and Barley (Matsuo Basho, trans. Lucien Stryk): Yes!

The Transformation (Juliana Spahr): No

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Matsuo Basho, trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa): No

The Book of Taliesin (anon., trans. Gwyneth Lewis & Rowan Williams): No

What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems (Ruth Stone): Eh

Face (Sherman Alexie): NO

No Surrender (Ai): Eh

The Summer of Black Widows (Sherman Alexie): Yes!

The Afflicted Girls (Nicole Cooley): Yes!

Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande (Jimmy Santiago Baca): No

American Smooth (Rita Dove): No

Elegy (Mary Jo Bang): No

Angel (Giles Dorey): NO

Collected Poems (Paul Auster): Eh

June-Tree (Peter Balakian): Yes

We Must Make a Kingdom of It (Gregory Orr): Eh

Only as the Day is Long (Dorianne Laux): No

Grace Notes (Rita Dove): Yes

Bathwater Wine (Wanda Coleman): Yes

My Soviet Union (Michael Dumanis): No

American Milk (Ruth Stone): Yes

The Drowned Girl (Eve Alexandra): No

A Worldly Country (John Ashberry): No

The Complete Poems of Hart Crane: No

One Stick Song (Sherman Alexie): Yes

If You Call This Cry a Song (Hayden Carruth): No

Doctor Jazz (Hayden Carruth): No

The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Gabrielle Calvocoressi): No

And Her Soul Out of Nothing (Olena Kalytiak Davis): No

Prisoner of Hope (Yvonne Daley): No

The Other Man Was Me (Rafael Campo): No

My Wicked Wicked Ways (Sandra Cisneros): No

On Earth (Robert Creeley): Eh

Genius Loci (Alison Hawthorne Deming): Eh

Science and Other Poems (Alison Hawthorne Deming): Eh

Voices (Lucille Clifton): Yes

A New Path to the Waterfall (Raymond Carver): Eh

Where Shadows Will (Norma Cole): No

The Way Back (Wyn Cooper): No

A Cartography of Peace (Jean L. Connor): No

Minnow (Judith Chalmer): Yes!

Postcards from the Interior (Wyn Cooper): Yes

Natural History (Dan Chiasson): Eh

The Ship of Birth (Greg Delanty): Eh

Madonna anno domini (Joshua Clover): NO

The Terrible Stories (Lucille Clifton): No

The Flashboat (Jane Cooper): Eh

Book of Longing (Leonard Cohen): No

Streets in Their Own Ink (Stuart Dybek): Eh

Different Hours (Stephen Dunn): Yes

I Love This Dark World (Alice B. Fogel): Eh

Baptism of Desire (Louise Erdrich): Yes!

The Eternal City (Kathleen Graber): Eh

Monolithos (Jack Gilbert): Yes

Crown of Weeds (Amy Gerstler): No

Blue Hour (Carolyn Forché): No

Place (Jorie Graham): No

Meadowlands (Louise Gluck): Yes!

Dearest Creature (Amy Gerstler): No

Loosestrife (Stephen Dunn): No

Little Savage (Emily Fragos): Yes

The Living Fire (Edward Hirsch): No

On Love (Edward Hirsch): No

Human Wishes (Robert Hass): NO

Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (B. H. Fairchild): No

Sinking Creek (John Engels): No

Alabanza (Martín Espada): Yes

Saving Lives (Albert Goldbarth): No

All of It Singing (Linda Gregg): No

Green Squall (Jay Hopler): No

Tender Hooks (Beth Ann Fennelly): No

After (Jane Hirshfield): Eh

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (Tony Hoagland): NO

These Are My Rivers (Lawrence Ferlinghetti): No

Fruitful (Stephanie Kirby): No

Jaguar Skies (Michael McClure): No

Song (Brigit Pegeen Kelly): No

Roadworthy Creature, Roadworthy Craft (Kate Magill): No

Life in the Forest (Denise Levertov): No

Viper Rum (Mary Karr): No

Questions for Ecclesiastes (Mark Jarman): No

Brutal Imagination (Cornelius Eady): Yes

Alphabet of Bones (Alexis Lathem): No

Handwriting (Michael Ondaatje): No

Sure Signs (Ted Kooser): No

Sledding on Hospital Hill (Leland Kinsey): No

Between Silences (Ha Jin): Yes

House of Days (Jay Parini): No

Bird Eating Bird (Kristin Naca): Yes

Orpheus & Eurydice (Gregory Orr): Yes

Another America (Barbara Kingsolver): Yes

Candles in Babylon (Denise Levertov): Yes

The Clerk's Tale (Spencer Reece): Eh

Still Listening (Angela Patten): Yes

A Thief of Strings (Donald Revell): No

Wayfare (Pattiann Rogers): No

The Niagara River (Kay Ryan): No

The Bird Catcher (Marie Ponsot): No

Easy (Marie Ponsot): No

Human Dark with Sugar (Brenda Shaughnessy): No

Chronic (D. A. Powell): No

Novels/Fiction:

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Yiyun Li): No

The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories: Yes

Movies:

What Dreams May Come (1998, Vincent Ward): Yes

The Cat's Meow (2001, Peter Bogdanovich): Yes

The Birdcage (1996, Mike Nichols): Yes

The Color of Pomegranates (1969, Sergei Parajanov): No

The Eve of Ivan Kupalo (1969, Yuri Ilyenko): Yes

And here's my 2023 list!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Moon Io from Spacecraft Juno: There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth's moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io's interior gets heated and its surface has become covered with volcanoes. The featured image is from last week's flyby, passing within 12,000 kilometers above the dangerously active world. The surface of Io is covered with sulfur and frozen sulfur dioxide, making it appear yellow, orange and brown. As hoped, Juno flew by just as a volcano was erupting -- with its faint plume visible near the top of the featured image. Studying Io's volcanoes and plumes helps humanity better understand how Jupiter's complex system of moons, rings, and auroras interact. Juno is scheduled to make two flybys of Io during the coming months that are almost 10 times closer: one in December and another in February 2024.

Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & Copyright: Ted Stryk & Fernando García Navarro :: [Robert Scott Horton]

* * * * *

73 The Tao is always at ease. It overcomes without competing, answers without speaking a word, arrives without being summoned, accomplishes without a plan.

Its net covers the whole universe. And though its meshes are wide, it doesn’t let a thing slip through.

-Stephen MitchellTao te Ching

[brianmayfan]

Nasa Picture of the day:

Moon Io from Spacecraft Juno

Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & Copyright: Ted Stryk & Fernando García Navarro

Explanation: There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth's moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io's interior gets heated and its surface has become covered with volcanoes. The featured image is from last week's flyby, passing within 12,000 kilometers above the dangerously active world. The surface of Io is covered with sulfur and frozen sulfur dioxide, making it appear yellow, orange and brown. As hoped, Juno flew by just as a volcano was erupting -- with its faint plume visible near the top of the featured image. Studying Io's volcanoes and plumes helps humanity better understand how Jupiter's complex system of moons, rings, and auroras interact. Juno is scheduled to make two flybys of Io during the coming months that are almost 10 times closer: one in December and another in February 2024.

[spaceflight-insider]

Study makes case for geophysical planet definition

Study makes case for geophysical planet definition

Depiction of all spherical worlds in the solar system with diameters under 10,000 kilometers. Credit: NASA / JPL, JHUAPL/SwRI, SSI, The Planetary Society, and UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA, processed by Gordan Ugarkovic, Ted Stryk, Bjorn Jonsson, Roman Tkachenko, and Emily Lakdawalla In an in-depth study of planet classification from the time of Galileo to the present, a group of planetary scientists…

[twiglet192]

A Rogue Planet with a Roguish Moon. Credit: Image made by the author with e-onsoftware’s VUE 8 (2010) and updated with VUE Creator (2020).

ROGUE GALLERY

The Drake Equation was first formulated on November 1-2, 1961, during an informal conference on “Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life” in Green Bank, West Virginia. 

In the days before the meeting, American astronomer Frank Drake (1930-) created the now famous equation in an attempt to focus the discussion.

The original form of the equation is the following:

N = R* f(p) n(e) f(i) f(l) f (c) L

• N is the number of civilizations trying to communicate with us right now; • R* is the rate of star formation in stars per year; • f(p) is the fraction of those stars which have planetary systems; • n(e) is the number of Goldilocks (i.e., Earth-type) planets in a planetary system); • f(l) is the fraction of habitable planets that are inhabited; • f(i) is the fraction of inhabited planets that possess intelligent technological civilizations; • f (c) is the fraction of intelligent technological civilizations that choose to emit detectable signals; • L is the length of time signals will be sent.

The celestial body under the equation is Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Credit: Kevin M. Gill www.apoapsys.com (2014). Europa image: NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk.

The first three factors are astronomical, the fourth and fifth are biological, the last two factors are social. There are several issues with the equation. Among these:

(1) The uncertainties are large enough for the astronomical factors and increase as one progresses from the astronomical to the biological to the social.

(2) Most factors depend on theoretical insights of star and planet formation, new discoveries about exoplanets, and varying subjective opinions on the evolution of life and intelligence. The presumed longevity of civilization must also be taken into account.

(3) The equation has many hidden assumptions, among these: a uniform rate of star formation (SFR) over the Galaxy lifetime and a steady-state of civilization birth and death. 

(4) No matter what value one chooses for R*, the assumption is always that a habitable planet must have a star. However, rogue worlds (bodies that have been thrown out of their own nascent solar system) wander around the Galaxy unattached a to star.

This last item has recently awoken great interest in the scientific community.

Theoretical calculations (Imagined Life, by James S. Trefil and Michael Summers, 2019) suggest that:

"[...] the number of rogues might be anywhere between twice and thousands of times the number of conventional planets. Interstellar space must be littered with them!"

Also, rogue planets need not be uninteresting ice balls with no life and no energy. Lacking direct radiation from a star, a world can be heated by the residual power from its formation and the radioactive decay of elements in its interior. If provided with one or more moons, the planet can draw energy from a process known as tidal heating (which is responsible for the subsurface oceans on some of Jupiter and Saturn moons).

All in all, rogue planets can be compared to (Imagined Life, by James S. Trefil and Michael Summers, 2019):

"[...] houses whose lights have been turned off but whose furnaces are still operating."

Interestingly, rogue planets had been predicted as early as the 1930s by American horror and S.F. author Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

In his short story: The Haunter of the Dark, he wrote:

"[...] remember Yuggoth, and more distant Shaggai, and the ultimate void of the black planets... [...]."

When the planet Pluto had just been discovered by Clyde Tombaugh (1906-97) at Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff, Arizona), he wrote another short story: The Whisperer in Darkness.

Here are a few quotes: 

"[...] Their main immediate abode is a still undiscovered and almost lightless planet at the very edge of our solar system – beyond Neptune and the ninth in distance from the [S]un. It is, as we have inferred, the object mystically hinted at as 'Yuggoth' in certain ancient and forbidden writings; [...] I would not be surprised if astronomers become sufficiently sensitive to these thought-currents to discover Yuggoth when the Outer Ones wish them to do so. But Yuggoth, of course, is only the stepping-stone. (*) The main body of the beings inhabits strangely organised abysses wholly beyond the utmost reach of any human imagination."

And also:

"[...] Those wild hills are surely the outpost of a frightful cosmic race – as I doubt all the less since reading that a new ninth planet has been glimpsed beyond Neptune, just as those influences had said it would be glimpsed. Astronomers, with a hideous appropriateness they little suspect, have named this thing 'Pluto.' I feel, beyond question, that it is nothing less than nighted Yuggoth [...]."

(*) Of course, H.P. Lovecraft didn't predict Pluto's existence. But when the astronomical community considered Pluto the Solar System's furthest planet, he did foresee the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). These are dwarf planets orbiting at the outer edges of a disk of rocky debris, similar to the asteroid belt (extending from Neptune to approximately 50 A.U. from the Sun). Nobody thought such objects could exist. Until 2005, when astronomer Michael Brown and his colleagues announced the discovery of Eris, a planet comparable in size to Pluto. KBOs, frozen, dark, but with an internal heat source that allows them to have subsurface oceans (and even life, maybe), are the typical rogue planets.

What would life be like on a rogue planet?

According to Imagined Life, by J.S. Trefil and M. Summers:

"It's dark. Not midnight-on-a-side-street dark, but trapped-in-a-cave dark. And no wonder—there's no sun in the sky, for this is a rogue world, one that circles no star. There is a moon up there somewhere, but without a source of light for it to reflect, it's just a darker patch in the sky. Whatever life forms live on this planet had better be able to see in infrared because there's simply no other light to be had. You're wearing infrared sensors, fortunately, and you spot a few of these creatures scurrying back to the planet's subterranean tunnels, where they can bask in the heat emanating from the planet's interior. [...]"

Life on a dark planet has been described by British author Arthur C. Clarke in his 1950 short story: A Walk in the Dark:

"[...] Here at the edge of the Galaxy, the stars were so few and scattered that their light was negligible. [...]" 

"[...] Here at this outpost of the Universe, the sky held perhaps a hundred faintly gleaming points of light, as useless as the five ridiculous moons on which no one had ever bothered to land. [...]" 

"[...] No one could deny that the tunnels out in the wasteland were rather puzzling, but everyone believed them to be volcanic vents. Though, of course, life often crept into such places. With a shudder, he remembered the giant polyps that had snared the first explorers of Vargon III [...]".

[fromspacewithlove]

Name it ? 😊

✨ Explore the solar system : https://www.fromspacewithlove.com/solar-system/

❤️ @fromspacewithlove

📸 Reprocessed image by Ted Stryk (NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk)

[humanoidhistory]

TODAY IN HISTORY: Despina, moon of Neptune, in transit across the blue planet. Composite view made from four archival frames captured by the Voyager 2 space probe on August 24, 1989, processed by Ted Stryk.

[photos-of-space]

Voyager 2s view of Ariel, an Uranian moon, processed by Ted Stryk to reveal some features on the night side

[kanyes-astrophysicist-cousin]

Voyager 2s view of Ariel, an Uranian moon, processed by Ted Stryk to reveal some features on the night side

[world-beauty]

Despina, Moon of Neptune

Credits: NASA, JPL, Ted Stryk

[coolspacepics]

Voyager 2s view of Ariel, an Uranian moon, processed by Ted Stryk to reveal some features on the night sidespaceporn

[paraparaparadigm]

Comet NEOWISE over the Knoxville Sunsphere. Credit: Ted Stryk