#keyhole nebula

[quiltofstars]

The Keyhole Nebula, part of the larger Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) // Hernan Lucas Gil Peruzzotti

The bright star at the center is none other than η Carinae!

[livingforstars]

The Keyhole Nebula Near Eta Carinae - April 4th, 1996.

"The dark dusty Keyhole Nebula gets its name from its unusual shape. Designated NGC 3324, the Keyhole Nebula is a smaller region superposed on the bright Eta Carina Nebula. The Eta Carina Nebula is the largest nebula in angular extent on the sky, larger than the famous Orion Nebula, but its southerly location makes it less familiar to northern hemisphere skywatchers. The star Eta Carinae itself is extremely variable and has faded in a mere 150 years - formerly one of the brightest in the sky, it is now invisible without a telescope. The nebula created by the star's 19th century outburst has been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope."

[silvereyedowl]

(source)

2024 April 19

See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download

the highest resolution version available.

The Great Carina Nebula

Image Credit & Copyright: Demison Lopes

Explanation: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-years. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye. But at a distance of 7,500 light-years it lies some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star above the central dark notch in this field and left of the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324).

[requiem-on-water]

Mysterious Cosmic ‘Keyhole’: a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion is a relic of recent star formation – it is composed of debris left over from the formation of a newborn star and it's around 1,350 light-years from Earth. {image credit: Nasa}

[world-beauty]

The Keyhole Nebula

Credits: NOAO, AURA

[apod]

2024 April 19

The Great Carina Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Demison Lopes

Explanation: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-years. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye. But at a distance of 7,500 light-years it lies some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star above the central dark notch in this field and left of the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324).

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240419.html

[psykopaths]

Cosmic Keyhole" (NGC 1999) Scientists first believed that the conspicuous hole in the center of this nebula was a Bok globule - a dense, cold cloud of gas and dust that blocks out background light. But later observations suggest that the dark patch is actually an empty void in space

[just--space]

The Great Nebula in Carina : In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebulas. The Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324), the bright structure just below the image center, houses several of these massive stars. The entire Carina Nebula, captured here, spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a supernova explosion, X-ray images indicate that much of the Great Nebula in Carina has been a veritable supernova factory. via NASA

[blasteffect]

Bok Globule !

A Bok globule nicknamed the "caterpillar" appears at the right. Its glowing edge indicates that it is being photoionized by the hottest stars in the cluster. It has been hypothesized that stars may form inside such dusty cocoons. The top of the Keyhole Nebula, the most prominent feature embedded inside Carina, is on the left. Another Bok globule is in the foreground.

Hubble: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); CTIO: N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley) and NOAO/AURA/NSF

[ryanyflags]

Anattractional / absolnian (anatt or absol/absolni for short) flags part 2 ( ╹ ᵕ╹) ◼️🩶◽️◼️ (Due to the image limit, this is split into 2 posts.)

A continuation of my other aspec flag sets, I decided to make some for anattractional (I really like this label).

-✦

loveless anatt ✦ lovequeer anatt ✦ heartless anatt

-✦

loveflux anatt ✦ nebulattractional

-✦

anattvague ✦ caedattractional ✦ autianatt

-✦

Like the other aspec terms, (some of) these can have multiple names too, with the anattractional, absolnian, anatt, absol, & absolni part being interchangeable. I didn't list every possible term, to keep it brief. E.g. loveless anatt can also be called loveless anattractional, loveless absolnian, loveless absol, and loveless absolni.

-✦

I especially want to mention the nebulattractional flag I made.

It's picked from The Cosmic Keyhole (reflection nebula). For one, I think the colour palette of that nebula is very fitting with the anattractional flag(s). Also, I find the story behind it interesting. The Wikipedia page says people first thought the black center patch was due to extremely dense gas, but later found it's actually just empty space, despite previous beliefs. And it's still poorly understood, like an unexplained phenomenon. I think it's kind of fitting, and that nebula just looks really cool in general.

-✦

@jamiieeez has already made a lot of anattractional flags, using dark red as the main colour / an alt anattractional flag.

I like the dark grey / black theme (even if its not as distinctive), so I'll still post my versions.

-✦

[A-spec flag sets masterpost]

[ckret2]

Per requests a few months back, I did say if I ever wrote something I thought I might cut, I'd post it here. So here, have a free scene: the first appearance of the Henchmaniacs, post Bill's death.

Ultimately, I will keep this scene; but as it's currently written I think it's about twice as long and half as interesting as it needs to be, so probably I'm going to tighten and polish it a lot to say the same stuff, but faster.

But that's a lot of words liable to be removed, so y'all get to see it as is before I start trimming it down.

####

"We should bail on this dump," Pyronica said, standing on one of the many edges of the Quadrangle of Qonfusion, staring out at the Nightmare Realm. The light of swirling neon-acidic cotton candy nebulas threatened to overpower the much smaller light of her limb flames. "Let's be real: this place wasn't our fortress, it was Bill's. I'm sick of this place. If you can call it a place." She gestured out at the roiling bile lights. Her movement, like the flap of a butterfly's wing creating a hurricane, was enough to set off crackles of lightning millions of miles long in the faraway distance. "All it'd take is a hard sneeze to knock the whole realm down."

Huddled on a nearby wall, staring out at the chaos with Pyronica, Paci-Fire said solemnly, "I want to stay, Mother. The Nightmare Realm might not be a 'place' to you, but it is the only home I've ever known."

"Probably one of my worst life decisions," Pyronica muttered. "You've never had a chance to know another home, Paci. You'd like living in a real dimension if you gave it a shot!"

"No." Paci-Fire crossed his arms. "I don't want to."

"At least think about it." Pyronica gestured again into the distance. "There's nothing to do around here! You've got to travel like a zillion light years to get to any dimensions worth visiting. You like destroying moons so much—wouldn't it be nice to live somewhere that has moons? Instead of going on a road trip to another dimension every time you want to drive a civilization to extinction?"

"And then what would we do? Go to our home inside that same dimension? Wait in front of the fireplace for the authorities to come knocking at our door?" A side-effect of growing up in the Henchmaniacs was that Paci-Fire regarded The Authorities as a nebulous bogeyman of a force that was as spiteful as the devil himself and personally out to get him and all his family and friends. "No, Mother. I do not wish to cower in the dark corners of—" his lower mouth sneered around his pacifier, "civilized dimensions, nor flee from one to the next every time the authorities catch our trail. There is nowhere safer for us than the Nightmare Realm."

"We're just cowering outside civilized dimensions if we stay here," Pyronica said. Paci-Fire's red eyes flared brighter, and Pyronica playfully tugged his horn. "We can easily find a dimension as primitive as 46'\ without any organized interstellar law and order. And it'd be worth it just to live somewhere with consistent physics."

"I am contented with the inconsistent physics," Paci-Fire said sulkily.

"Paci, it took you fifty years longer than most kids to learn how to walk," Pyronica said. "You don't have to be afraid of the authorities in other dimensions—"

"Mother! I know no fear."

"Well," Pyronica said. "You don't have to be wary of them, then. I got by fine before joining Bill out here! Most of us did! And we can get by fine again! Zan," Pyronica kicked off the ground to float up level with the next floor, where several Henchmaniacs were playing a video game, "you still have worshippers in your home dimension, right? Aren't you still getting offerings?"

Zanthar shrugged noncommittally.

"They've still got legends of you, you can whip them back in shape in no time. Keyhole, you've got family—"

Without looking away from the screen, where he was losing hideously, Keyhole muttered, "I'm not moving back in with my mom."

"I'm not talking about your mom, stupid, what about your sisters?" 

Keyhole winced, though it was hard to tell whether it was from Pyronica's question or from getting killed in the game. "I don't know... Bill and I were talking about them once, and I realized they're as bad as Mom was. Bill said  probably the only reason they didn't treat me as bad is because they never got the opportunity—"

"Who cares what Bill said," Pyronica snapped. "Bill's dead! We don't have to listen to him anymore!"

"Hear hear," 8 Ball muttered; but he couldn't throw in anything else, lest Zanthar blow him up and win the match.

Pyronica said, "Face it: the only reason we didn't leave this place millennia ago is because Bill couldn't leave. None of us even like the stupid Quadrangle!"

Sliding around the bottom edge of a staircase to its top side, Amorphous Shape said, "Excuse us."

Pyronica rolled her eye and immediately amended herself, "Nobody except Bill's 2D groupies like the Quadrangle."

Miffed, Morph asked, "What's wrong with it?"

"What's—?!" She gestured wildly at the feat of geometry-breaking architecture, walls and columns and floors and stairs that connected in impossible ways. "Morph, the physics are wrong with it! You can't look at it without getting vertigo! Look at that staircase, it shouldn't be able to go there!"

"It's like that on purpose, it's a shortcut."

"That's not the point!"

"It doesn't give us vertigo," Morph said defensively. They slithered up the stairs to the video gamers and peeled off the floor to looked at Hectorgon. "Does it give you vertigo?"

"No, I'm fine."

"What about you, Kryptos?"

There was no reply.

"Krypt?" Morph slid down a column and unfolded questioningly around a corner.

Kryptos was in the rec room, lounging on Bill's stupid tacky optical illusion throne with the fabric of reality upholstery, staring out a window (or skylight, depending on your point of perspective).

Morph said, "Bill's gonna be furious you're using his throne."

"Whatever. Z's already spilled time punch on the armrest." Kryptos pointed at the patch of reality on the armrest that was out of chronological synch with the rest of the throne.

"He's not gonna be furious," Pyronica said. "He's not gonna be anything because he's dead. He died. D-E-A-D."

"He's not." And suddenly Morph were in Pyronica's face, a flurry of shapes and lines and piercing slitted eyes. "If Bill was dead, the whole dimension would be falling apart even faster, we're sure of it—"

"So let's bail while we can—"

"—but it's not speeding up," they said. "We've been taking regular readings for months, and if anything, its unraveling is slowing down. That would been impossible if he was dead, he's instrumental to holding the Nightmare Realm together—"

"Unless he lied about that, and he was actually making everything worse," Pyronica said. "I'm sick of your stupid 'readings,' it was your 'readings' that said 46'\ was perfect to take over! Was that stupid barrier part of your readings?!"

"That barrier was extremely localized, there's no way we could have detected—"

"The portal was right in the middle of it!"

8 Ball groaned as Zanthar whittled away the last of his HP and tossed his controller at the TV. The TV squealed in fear. He leaned through a window that opened into the rec room below and said, "If Bill is alive, that's just another reason to get out of the Nightmare Realm! Leave before he gets back! He can play king in this dump by himself."

Paci-Fire said, "Surely, you do not mean that. Were Bill still around..."

"No! No, I do mean it! The only reason we stayed here is because everyone's too starstruck or too scared to ditch him! Not anymore! If his flat-brained cultists wanna wait for him, fine! But why do we all gotta stay?"

"Hey!" Hectorgon rounded on 8 Ball. "Who're you calling flat, pinhead—?"

Kryptos tuned out the argument upstairs/next door as 8 Ball and Hectorgon started brawling. Who were they kidding? Nobody was leaving. Maybe 8 Ball, he'd tried to split four or five times before crawling back, but Kryptos didn't care about him anyway. Bill had always been right about him, he was too selfish to care about the rest of the gang but too stupid to make it on his own. They'd taken in losers like that before and it had never been a big loss when they left. But no one else would leave. Where would they go?

Where could they go?

Morph and Hect were desperate to hear from Bill. And truth be told, so was Kryptos: he was firmly in favor of staying in the Quadrangle just in case Bill casually floated back in one day, and he was willing to do anything they could think of to try to get him back. How could he not following even the thinnest thread of hope? But he didn't really believe Bill was out there. He'd been gone too long, and Kryptos couldn't imagine anything less catastrophic than Bill's destruction could have caused the complete collapse of the rift into 46'\ and the reversal of Weirdmageddon.

And yet Kryptos was still here, and still willing to look, because there was nothing else to do. What could they do if Bill was really gone? Bill was gonna get the shapes a new home. He was the only one who could do it. They'd held fast to that hope for a trillion years—who were they without it? Kryptos sure didn't know.

And then Kryptos got a call from Earth.

[quiltofstars]

The Keyhole Nebula (dark nebula, bottom left) and η Carinae // Paulosergio_ns

[livingforstars]

Doomed Star Eta Carinae - June 11th, 1996.

"Eta Carinae may be about to explode. But no one knows when - it may be next year, it may be one million years from now. Eta Carinae's mass - about 100 times greater than our Sun - makes it an excellent candidate for a full blown supernova. Historical records do show that about 180 years ago, Eta Carinae underwent an unusual outburst that made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Eta Carinae, in the Keyhole Nebula, is the only star thought to emit natural LASER light. This released image taken in September, 1995, resulted from sophisticated image-processing procedures designed to bring out new details in the unusual nebula that surrounds this rogue star. Now clearly visible are two distinct lobes, a hot central region, and strange radial streaks. The lobes are filled with lanes of gas and dust, which absorb the blue and ultraviolet light emitted near the center."

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

BAM alternate transneumasc flags!

^ colorpicked from an image of the keyhole nebula cause prettyyyy

^ colorpicked from an image of saturn cause prettyyyy

^ colorpicked from the first ever image of a black hole cause prettyyyy

^ colorpicked from an image of an abyssal comb jelly cause prettyyyy

^ colorpicked from an image of a giant isopod cause prettyyyy

^ colorpicked from an image of a ruddy turnstone cause prettyyyy

^ colorpicked from an image of an orchid mantis cause prettyyyy

^ aaand one with custom colors. not entirely satisfied with this one, would like the pink to be softer without clashing with the blue…we’ll workshop it and make another post for it when we find a better palette

we initially set out just to make one, but! that's sorta the problem isn't it? there's really only one transneumasc flag, so. we made a bunch! most come from natural sources, too, like space and animals! how cool is that?

we tried to keep the warm + cool color palette a consistent pattern throughout them all (the black hole image didn’t have any cool shades) and have an assortment of shades and saturations so folks have plenty of options for which one they want to use

for us, we'll be cycling through a few!

[bsuobservatory]

According to this article on NASA's website, Eta Carinae, a star in the Keyhole Nebula, went through an interesting outburst about 170 years ago, which made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Check it out!

[world-beauty]

The Keyhole Nebula

Credits: NOAO, NSF, Copyright:, AURA