#and really we can barely tell what an exoplanet would look like for certain - we can guess based off

[oflgtfol]

Just to clear things up, those are not real photographs! They’re artist representations or simulations. We have only been able to directly image a handful of exoplanets, enough that they have their own (relatively short) wikipedia page

The current state of direct imaging is pretty bare-bones compared to those images above; currently, all we’re able to resolve are monochrome specks of light. Here’s some examples:

Star system PDS 70, with a closeup of its planet PDS 70c. The ring structure is a circumplanetary disk that the two planets PDS 70b and pds 70c formed from, and it may lead to the formation of more planets, or even the formation of moons around PDS 70c.

The very first direct image of an exoplanet (red one on the left), designated 2M1207b and taken in 2004. Fun fact, its host star 2M1207 is actually not a star, but a brown dwarf! That means that 2M1207b was not only the first exoplanet ever to be directly imaged, but also the first exoplanet discovered around a brown dwarf!

Star system HR 8799, with several of its planets' orbits captured in real time. The dark circle in the middle is actually the star HR 8799 itself, with a circular shade placed over it to avoid the star's light from flooding the telescope camera, thus allowing the much much dimmer exoplanets to be imaged. The planets listed in order from furthest to closest to the star are HR 8799b (top left), HR 8799c (top right), HR 8799d (bottom right), and HR 8799e (center right).

[blog-sliverofjade]

Omega Protocol 27: Interrogation

Summary: In the mid-21st century, the elite decided to cement society’s strata into our DNA, creating a genetic caste system. One of the early Omegas is cryogenically frozen and forgotten. Revived nearly two centuries later, she has no idea what she has become and has to navigate a strange new world while surrounded by Alphas, whatever those are.

Leading the military arm of his people in exile on a dangerous planet is no easy feat for Captain Niklaus Reed.  He has to build and secure a settlement against megafauna straight out of the Ice Age before families start arriving on the distant planet.  When an Omega is found in an old research base, things become… complicated.

Chapter 1  Chapter 2  Chapter 3  Chapter 4  Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7  Chapter 8  Chapter 9  Chapter 10  Chapter 11  Chapter 12  Chapter 13  Chapter 14  Chapter 15  Chapter 16  Chapter 17Chapter 18  Chapter 19  Chapter 20  Chapter 21  Chapter 22  Chapter 23  Chapter 24  Chapter 25  Chapter 26

Word Count:  1592

Much love to my awesome beta @pandabearer

“Talk to me.”  Emma looked up from where she was idly tracing invisible designs on the ridges of his abdomen.  It was the first time the Alpha had solicited her thoughts on anything.

“About what?”

“What happened last night.”  Pulling away from him, she curled in on herself.  Or rather, she tried to.  Niklaus let her withdraw slightly, but his half-embrace held firm when she would have turned away.  “Nice try.”

“How did you know…?”  That I tried to literally curl up and die?  He merely looked at her.  Right, the thing between them that she’d been studiously trying to ignore.  “I thought that they’d threatened to string you up by your thumbs if you didn’t leave me alone?”

“I think it involved honey, rope, and those giant fire ants.  Or was it the death wasps?”  She giggled at the mental picture, which was no doubt his intent.  “I couldn’t just sit there with my thumb up my ass while you destroyed yourself,” he admitted once the laughter subsided.  “You’re not talking to anyone.  I figure I’m already on your shit list, might as well make you talk.”

“You’re going to interrogate me?  Kinky.”

He didn’t dignify that with a response.

She lay there stiffly.  Bracing his free hand behind his head, he tilted his face, eyes half-lidded, a little more towards the faint light filtering in.  One could have been fooled into thinking he was dozing if they couldn’t see him rubbing small circles against her back.

When she finally did speak, her voice was raspy due to a dry mouth and being quiet for so long, not because of any lump in her throat.  “I didn’t fight.”  The words were barely even a breath.  He waited until it was apparent she wasn’t going to continue.

“What did you do?”  Turning to shelter her with his body, he petted her hair.  This was a softer man than the one she’d first met, yet neither was he treating her with kid gloves like nearly everyone else was.

“I threw Fluffybutt at his face and ran.”  Nik chuckled and she joined him, although hers was partly a choked sob.

“I knew something was wrong when your damn chicken came back squawking her head off.  For that alone, she’s earned a stay of execution.”  For all that she’d threatened to fry the bird at the time, Emma had to agree.

“I should’ve fought back,” she murmured to the scar on his chest that had suddenly become fascinating.

“With what?  A chicken and harsh words?”

“There were sticks.”  She wasn’t being defensive, she was pointing out facts.

“He was twice your size and had a spear,” he said in the same flat manner he did when dressing down one of his people for doing something mildly stupid.  It had very rarely been directed at her.  “You did the smart thing.  Chances are he’d have killed you where you stood for challenging him.  Running was your best choice.  He was still faster, but you didn’t just stand there, did you?”

“No.”  God, she’d rather go through chemo again than have this conversation.

“And the head wound didn’t help, did it?”  Worrying at her bottom lip, she shook her head.  “What else do you think you could’ve done?”

“Don’t patronize me!”  Her ire lent her the fortitude to meet his gaze.

“I’m not.”  A low, hard statement.  “I’m trying to break you out of this spin you’re in.”  When she would have ducked her head again to hide her vulnerability, he gripped her chin and stared into her eyes.  “You’re too focused on what you think you should have done when the truth is you chose the course that ensured the greatest chance of survival.”  The steely commander was back, yet there was nothing cool or distant about him now; the fiery intensity that lay just beneath the surface wouldn’t permit that.

“I’m tired of feeling weak.”  She shook her head and her hair fell across her eyes, reminding her that she always suffered from the most horrendous bedhead.  Sitting up, she worked her fingers through her hair in an attempt to get it looking less like a camel had chewed on it in her sleep.  How does it manage to be both greasy and frizzy?  “I’m tired of not having control over anything that happens to me.  They took me from my home- my planet!- and changed me without my knowledge. then to freeze and forget about me.  I’m still not sure how to feel about… my heat.”  She had hated feeling that helpless and out of control.  “Then that happened, and you did this!”  A hand waved at the scar on her neck.  “I don’t even remember the last time I could make a major decision for myself.”  Her voice broke and trailed off.  “I don’t even know if I can trust you.”

Reed felt like someone had cut him off at the knees and allowed a herd of moofalo to run over his body.  His mate didn’t trust him, and he’d given her precious little reason to.  She had scooted away from him to sit with her back against the wall.  Already he missed the warm weight of her against him, leaving him cold, which was a rare sensation for him.

“From what I understand this is permanent.”  There was no divorce for their kind.  “What are my choices?  Do I get any or are you going to keep dictating to me?”  The hunch of her shoulders was a knife to his gut.  “Makes me wonder what the point of living is if this could even be called a life.”  He had taken bullets that hurt less than her speech.

“Don’t you dare give up now.  You’ve survived too much for that.”  It came out roughly, bordering on a growl, but she didn’t flinch.  “Besides, you still have a chance to make me regret claiming you.”

“Spite as motivation to live?”  A wry twist to her mouth.

“If it works.”

“You’re saying you don’t already regret this?”

“Not yet,” he smirked.

“Oh, you are going to regret saying that.”  A small smile bloomed but faded before reaching its fullness.  “What were those things?”

Blowing out a breath, he sat up to sit against the other wall, perpendicular to her.

“Not all of the original test subjects were as successful as you.  The original batch of Alphas and Betas were feral, attacked the research team, and escaped.”  They had also committed unspeakable acts in the process, but she didn’t need to know that when she had already had a glimpse of it.  “Those are their descendants.  We call them ferals or nomads because they cycle through different outposts depending on the season.  Rooster started calling them nad’s, short for Nasty Ass Dickriders.”  The term wasn’t one he’d normally use in front of an Omega, but the crude phrasing startled a chuckle out of her like he’d suspected it would.

“They’re like cavemen, like they devolved?”

“The going theory is that when they were tinkering with the genetic code, they went a little too far back in our evolutionary timeline.  The next team thought to get around the intelligence issue by splicing in animal DNA to get the strength and stamina they were looking for,” he explained.

“Wait, you’re saying they killed the first team and then sent another?”  Her eyebrows climbed towards her hairline.

“It was merely a ‘setback.’”  His lip still curled at the memory of the classified reports he had been privy to as part of his training.  While those back on Earth might not want their kind around, they still wanted to experiment with a colony on an exoplanet, just not with “proper humans.”  That meant certain information had to be shared or else risk inevitable failure.  “The second succeeded, despite another concerted attack from the ferals.  They decided it was safe to return because at that point they could argue that we counted as an extra-terrestrial species and thus exempt from the ban on tinkering with human genetics.”

“That’s a twisted sort of logic that sadly makes sense.”

“No one told you?”  They had agreed to keep the nads’ existence from her to avoid adding to her stress load, no one suspecting that she would wander beyond the protected core, but he’d assumed that someone would have told her after the incident.  Part of him was glad that she had come to him, hoped that she trusted him enough to tell the truth.

“I think Barbie tried, but I really didn’t feel like talking.”  She smoothed a pillow and fussed with its placement.  “Where do we go from here, Nik?”

He knew what he wanted to do, which was keep her close where he could protect her.  What he said was, “What do you want?”

Emma was silent for so long he wasn’t certain she would answer.

“I want to learn to defend myself.”

“We can start this afternoon.”  The response didn’t even require thought, it was automatic.  Like any Alpha, he wanted to be the one to protect his Omega, but he wasn’t arrogant enough to think that she would stay within a protected bubble anymore.  “First, we get some food into you.”

She opened her mouth, most likely to argue, but the rumbling of her stomach interrupted.  “Um, would you mind stepping out so I can get dressed?”  Instead of pointing out that he’d already seen her in her birthday suit, he slipped out into the hallway and tried not to think of her wearing nothing but his mark.

[luninosity]

One more thank-you short fic, for @whowaswillbe, who requested “ yoga seb, I'd love to see it being before they get together -- Chris being completely transfixed by this gorgeous creature (and who could blame him?)”. I don’t really know *that* much about yoga, but they are both (relative) beginners here in any case, so...have some first-meeting Evanstan fluff!

##

Chris should be good at yoga. In theory. Given his flexibility.

 He wobbles. Trying to do something called mountain pose. He’s not a good mountain. Or whatever.

 He’s done gymnastics and ballet and improv theater classes. He knows how to move. Or he’s always more or less thought so.

 He’s aware that this is not enough.

 He’s also aware that at least half his problem, if not more, involves the utterly beautiful man just in front and slightly to the right of him. The man has duckling-soft brown hair, infinite legs, and an ass that exists in a state of loveliness which cannot be defined by words.

 He wobbles again. They change poses—the instructor’s nice but relentless, making them keep up, though with consideration for everyone’s introductory level of skill—and get into something called downward dog, which makes Chris think about his own dog and Dodger trying to climb all over him when he’d been doing push-ups a few days ago, and then he wonders if the beautiful man in front of him likes dogs, and if so whether he’d like Chris’s dog specifically, and Chris’s house, and—

 This is almost certainly not a calm and flowing state of mind.

 The beautiful man moves much more easily than Chris; they’re both here in this beginning class, but he’s clearly been coming longer. He knows someone else in the class, and that person knows the instructor; Chris had seen them come in, laughing, teasing each other. He’s got the vague impression that they’re gym buddies who drop into a friend’s session occasionally for some balancing-out of workouts: a need for a type of practice that’s soothing, meditative, revitalizing. The friend’s a personal trainer or something; Chris has seen him around the gym.

 Chris himself is here because he’d thought it might be a helpful idea. His anxiety’s been acting up a bit—first big political initiatives, first year as a congressman, first year trying his hardest to go from being a moderately successful actor-director to a steward of the future. He thinks he’s doing okay sometimes, but then sometimes he panics about his own inexperience and critical comments, which fortunately haven’t been that critical. Mostly the commentators and pundits’re waiting to see how he does with this arts funding program, he guesses.

 He’d thought yoga might soothe jangled nerves. Might get him out of his head and into his body: relaxed but focused, present and grounded.

 He’d been half right. He’s certainly focused on someone’s body.

 They do a few more poses. Bending, stretching. He gets into a kind of rhythm. Good if unfamiliar working of muscles. Contemplation of breath and movement. Occasional glances at the living artwork practicing an inverted pose in front of him. Chris’s brain becomes stuck on that sight, and even though he normally can do a near-flawless handstand—thank you, gymnastics—his mind and desires and instant arousal all collude and collide to make him flop over into an ungainly heap.

 The beautiful man actually turns around. Grey eyes. Grey-blue, like opals, like precious stones framed by tiny laughter-lines and delicious cheekbones. Chris Evans, who hasn’t drawn much lately—no time, no inspiration, too drained at the ends of long meetings—wants to put pencil to paper. Instead he sprawls there on his mat and cannot think of a single thing to say.

 The man smiles at him, not without concern, probably because Chris is still lying in place in an unimpressive pile of limbs.

 Their instructor arrives to help. Chris sighs and pays attention and then applies his skill and kicks his way into a wonderful, stunning, effortless, hopefully dazzling handstand.

 He’s facing the wrong way. He can’t tell whether those jewelry-box eyes are even seeing him.

 They flop down into a closing meditation pose, lying on the floor. The air tastes faintly of spice and afternoon warmth; the music’s not something he knows, but it’s tranquil now. The floor’s hard under his mat, but in a good way: he feels good, he realizes slowly.

 With or without those pretty eyes watching him: he does feel good.

 He’s gotten out of the office. He’s spent an hour not worrying about his political inadequacies or self-doubt. He’s pushed himself to try something new, and his body’s humming in a satisfied kind of way. And he’s seen a lovely person, and that’s a sort of appreciation without pressure: like gazing at a painting, reading a certain line of a poem, knowing the world’s better for that extra bit of beauty in it.

 Of course he’s telling himself that. He does mean it. But he would also like to get to know that particular bit of beauty. Someone who turned around to help him, who smiled at him after clumsiness.

 He opens his eyes and sits up. The class is ending; everyone gathers up things, pauses to chat, mills around. The pretty-eyed man and his personal trainer friend are talking to the instructor. Not looking his way.

 Chris gives a small wistful mental shrug, and takes a step toward the door and his life.

 “Hey.” A footfall, a breathless syllable. Chris turns. Those eyes. Right there. “Hi,” the man says, now blushing a little for no discernable reason. He’s even more adorable up close: somehow shy and sweet and brave simultaneously.

 Chris likes shy and sweet and brave.

 “You, um, you’re actually good at handstands?” the man tries, in a tone that’s already biting its lip at its own awkward determination. “I mean, I saw you—I mean I wouldn’t’ve guessed that you—oh fuck I didn’t mean it like that, just because you’re a politician, I’m sure you can do a lot of physical flexible things too—I did not mean that the way it sounded, I’m so sorry. I just. I don’t know. I wanted to. Say hi.”

 “Hi,” Chris says dazedly. Gorgeous, tripping over words, worried about insulting him, and capable of hearing his own innuendo. Amazing. Wonderful head to toe. “You, um, you know who I am?”

 “I’ve followed your career for ages. As an actor, when you started directing—I love Before We Go, it’s so poignant—and when you started getting more political…” The man’s cheeks are pink but he’s holding Chris’s gaze, not ducking away. “I’m Sebastian. I’m trying not to be weird, I swear. Only I’m a writer so it’s kind of a job description. Being weird. Oh god, sorry again, what are words.”

 “Sebastian,” Chris repeats, an echo because he can barely think of anything else. Only Sebastian. He offers his hand. Sebastian takes it.

 Their fingers meet, in a sunlit yoga studio, surrounded by ebbing students and buoyant exertion.

 “You’re a writer?” Sebastian’s hand’s warm. Long fingers. Graceful in a baby-colt way, matching the endless legs, the exuberant hair. Neither of them has let go. “What do you write?”

 “Um.” Sebastian looks at their hands. This is no longer a handshake by any reasonable definition. Chris has unconsciously begun rubbing a thumb over that soft skin: exploring, gentling, instinctively being an anchor for babbling words. They both seem fine with this. “Technically I’m a professor? Rutgers. Creative writing. But I’m on sabbatical. Working on the next novel. Or completely failing to work on the next novel. I thought yoga might help. It’s about Mars. Science fiction.”

 Sebastian’s some sort of genius novel-writing prodigy of a professor, Chris concludes. Nothing short of a phenomenon. Extraordinary beauty, kindness, intellect, and breathtakingly earnest acquiescence to care. “What do you think about the, um, seven new exoplanets and the possibility of actual water and ocean life?”

 Sebastian’s eyes light up.

 Chris grins. “Same.”

 “Would you…” Sebastian takes a deep breath, glances at their hands again, and goes with, in a nervous endearing rush, “…want to grab Starbucks and talk about, um, handstand technique and space oceans with me?”

 “Sebastian,” Chris says very gravely, answering the sparkle in that joyous grey-blue gaze, “I would absolutely love to buy you Starbucks and talk about handstands and yoga and terraforming and space oceans,” which is true, true like a blinding rush of light, like the first glimpse of the rest of his life, like Sebastian’s smile.