#the north star.... binary system... twin stars

[bi-demon-ium]

ok I'm gonna send two and you can pick whichever one(s) seem interesting: 5. with the twins and/or 25. with Nicholas and hmmm Rhonda perhaps? or just any of the adults

ohhhohohohoho :)

5 ("I don't know if I can forgive.") + the twins (ao3.)

Nicholas was looking out at the stars when his brother walked up behind him.

“Hello, Nathaniel,” he said, without turning.

Right. He’d always done that. It was a little uncanny.

“May I… sit?” he asked, tone even—but it was uncharacteristically hesitant of him.

Nicholas gestured, but still didn’t look at him. “Please,” he said.

He gingerly sat on the bench next to him. Not close, but not at the other edge, either.

There was a beat of silence, not quite comfortable, but not quite tense, either.

“You wanted to talk,” Nathaniel said finally. “I’m here. Now is as good a time as any, don’t you think?”

Nicholas doesn’t answer for a moment. “I suppose,” he says.

He doesn’t continue.

Curtain waits, patiently. Nicholas was gathering his thoughts. Nathaniel knew him well enough to see that.

They sat together for what could have been minutes or hours.

“…do you think we can even fix this?” Nicholas said finally, voice almost small. Far away, like he wasn’t just looking at the stars above, but among them.

Curtain looked down at his hands. “I… don’t know,” he admitted.

“We’ve hurt each other a lot,” said Nicholas.

“I think,” Nathaniel said, and it hurt him to admit it, “I’ve hurt you more.”

He had hurt Nathaniel badly, once. Once.

Nicholas didn’t disagree. He just hummed for a moment. Then finally tore his gaze from the sky to look at Nathaniel, eyes dark and sad.

“Were you punishing me?” he said, and damn him, he sounded genuinely curious. “Lashing out?”

“I don’t know,” said Nathaniel quietly, and it was his turn to look away, look up. “Maybe.”

He had just wanted Nicholas to choose him. To take his side. But—no. It wasn’t as innocent as that. He’d wanted control, like he always did. It wasn’t that he’d really wanted to hurt Nicholas: he’d just wanted to take care of him the only way he knew how. By controlling everything, just as he did for himself.

Another beat.

“…I am sorry,” said Nicholas. “I don’t—why I left—I shouldn’t…” he sighed as he struggled to come up with the words. “…I don’t know,” he said helplessly. “I had to leave, but I never wanted—”

His voice broke off again, and he curled in on himself a little.

When Curtain looked back at him, he was staring at the grass under their feet. A slight breeze ruffled his graying curls, but he didn’t seem to notice.

And then, much quieter, almost a whisper, “…do you know what it’s like?”

Curtain blinks, unsure how rhetorical that is, if he should say what, what’s like, but Nicholas continues and the choice is made for him.

“To have something inside your head? Without asking?”

…oh.

“To—to feel things that aren’t yours, remember doing things and saying things you wouldn’t do, the—the humiliation of that, the—the violation.”

Nathaniel can’t say a word. He’d just wanted Nicholas to be happy, wanted to do something good and right, wanted Nicholas to be happy enough to stay willingly. He’d been stupidly, recklessly desperate, determined and bullheaded, blindly forcing himself to believe in what he was doing.

He could make Nicholas happy—undo the pain and trauma he'd caused, undo the stress and anxiety that had grayed his hair and exhausted him beyond measure and left him at the end of his rope all the time—and he could make Nicholas want to stay.

And for a while it had worked: the shock of Nicholas with him again, easily praising him, telling him he was worth something, telling stupid jokes and being his affectionate, intelligent self, so easy to talk to and bounce ideas off of, so easy to get lost in memories with—it had been… good. So good.

But it had been false. False for both of them.

“…it hurts,” Nicholas said, his voice cracking a little. “Being changed like that. Knowing you’ve been changed but being unable to feel it.”

An I’m sorry feels completely, utterly inadequate. He’d known it was wrong. He’d just wanted him back. He’d been willing to force him.

He’d justified it to himself as being for the better—Nicholas would feel better, would be happier, would finally sleep like he should and relax and be healthier and he would stay, and they’d be together.

“…and,” Nicholas says, now on a roll as Nathaniel sits there, frozen, “and—so much, so much—do you know—do you know what it’s like to have everyone think you’re—you’re crazy? To mock you behind your back and to your face, to—to be considered untrustworthy and paranoid and jealous? A downer, a conspiracy theorist, to be—to be completely isolated, and—and—and the gaslighting—”

His voice was going pitchy with his distress, high and upset and on the verge of breaking, almost squeaky, and something in Nathaniel’s chest felt tight. He couldn’t swallow around the lump in his throat.

Nicky only sounded like that when he was truly, truly, horrifically upset. It was rare. Or it had been. He’d heard it more in the little time they’d had together as adults than he had the entire first twelve years of their lives together.

“…It’s hard,” he says, voice breaking again, and he sounded on the verge of tears now, and Nathaniel could feel some burning in his eyes to match, “when no one believes you, when you’re told over and over you’re being—being unreasonable, being paranoid, being jealous.”

He nearly flinches at the word. He, too, had said some of these things, he knew. And Nicholas knew it, too, of course, even if he wasn’t saying it directly.

He breathes funny for a second, like he might fall asleep, like he’s catching his breath, but he doesn’t crumple.

“For a long time I wondered,” Nicholas said, quieter. “If maybe I really was imagining things. If they were right, if I’d just—finally cracked.” He gives a breathless, tiny, humorless laugh. “I suppose I should thank you, actually—the first time your Greys tried to kidnap me, I was pretty sure I couldn’t be seeing things that weren’t there after all.”

That was. kind of horrifying, actually.

Don’t thank me, he wanted to say, but his voice was caught in his throat. Please. Don’t thank me.

“…but then,” he said, and the next little laugh was more bitter, almost ugly in a way Nicky’s laugh never has been, and he didn’t fall asleep, because why would he with such a joyless thing, “then, I have nightmares about that, too. It’s hard to sleep. Harder.”

Right. Of course he did.

(And Nathaniel couldn’t fix it, couldn’t wipe the slape clean and give him Happiness—could only watch what he broke, watch the pieces tremble.)

“It was terrifying,” he said. “Being grabbed, manhandled off the street, no one even tried to help me—I have scars, you know. From the shock watches. They hurt every time.”

Every time. Because, of course, Curtain hadn’t just tried once. Nathaniel hadn’t just tried once.

“I felt so unsafe,” he said, and now there really are tears running down his face, and he’s staring up but not at the stars, just up, just away. “All the time. Scared. Alone. Hunted. And I had no idea—” his voice cracks, and he abruptly scrubs at his eyes with his sleeve almost violently. “—and then in my home. When I realized—when I realized it was—”

He actually sobs then, like he can’t get out of the word, can’t say you, it was you, it was you all this time, and then buries his face in his hands and just trembles. Shaking apart.

Nathaniel wants to reach out, wants to comfort him, wants to hug him, but he’s no longer sure if it would be welcome. If it would ever be welcome.

He wants to say you hurt me too, to revel in the anger and hurt and self-pity and buried pain that drove him all those years, to say you abandoned me, you broke me, you made me like this, but the excuse feels hollow now. The anger and pain are still there, but it no longer feels like righteous justification. It just hurts.

Nicholas’s shoulders jerk with another rough, wet sob, and then his trembling palms pull away to clench into fists for a moment, pressing against his legs, and he takes in a shuddering breath and continues, voice wavering.

“And my friends,” he says miserably. “My friends. You hurt so many people, you hurt children—you hurt children, Nathaniel! But—they were hurt, too, people I love, they were hurt so badly, and—and Milligan. Do you even remember him? He’s—he’s the kindest, gentlest person I’ve ever met. He’s strong and smart and wonderful and for so long, so long, I wondered who could have taken everything from him. I never even guessed how much.” His face crumples and still, still, he won’t look at him.

“He lost a child, Nathaniel,” he cries, “a child—his whole life, taken from him, his daughter growing up alone… and you took that from him.”

He almost hiccups with the force of the tears he’s trying to hold back, trying to stay coherent. “And how can I—?”

Curtain blinks away tears and realizes that he’s actually been crying silently for a while now. He doesn’t draw attention to it. He lets them fall. Best to let Nicholas say his piece.

(Hearing it all laid out before him is… overwhelming.)

(For the first time, Nathaniel thinks, rather grimly, that perhaps he is a bad person. Perhaps he has been the whole time. Perhaps that’s what the Glenns saw, when they chose his brother over him, perhaps they saw that he was rotten inside. Rotten and selfish.)

Nicholas is crying now, properly crying, and he says, “You’ve hurt me so badly. You’ve hurt people I care about. And I—I don’t know if I can forgive you.”

He says it like it takes a weight off his shoulders, almost gasping as the words come out, eyes wide and tearful.

…right. There it is, then. Nathaniel is. unforgivable.

He looks away entirely. He knew that. He knew that.

“Nathaniel,” Nicholas says, quiet and oh-so-sad, voice still thready and thin from the tears. “Nathaniel, look at me, please.”

Does he just want to really drive it home?

Nonetheless, Nathaniel turns to look. Isn’t it the least he can do?

Nicholas’s face crumples a little when he realizes Nathaniel is crying. Silently. Expression barely changing.

“Nathaniel,” he says again, “I don’t know if I can forgive you.”

Nathaniel isn’t sure what his face does but Nicholas makes a distressed noise.

“Wait,” he says, “But—but I want to.”

Of course you do, you sentimental fool, Nathaniel wants to say, but again, the words won’t come. He thinks his voice is gone, caught like a bird in a cage.

“I want to so badly,” Nicholas says, and his voice strains and stretches like it might break again, like he might just shatter. “I love you, and I miss you, and I—I don’t think you’re evil, or irredeemable, or rotten—”

Nathaniel actually jerks, the unintentional blow landing far too close to home, but Nicholas continues, voice soaked in tears, “I just want to be your brother again. I just want to try to fix everything. I miss you so much.”

“…what if it can’t be fixed?” Nathaniel finally manages to say, and in any other circumstance he’d be horrified at how hoarse and cracked his voice is, how audible it is that he’s been crying. “What if I can’t be fixed?”

Nicholas’s face crumples again. “Oh, Nate,” he says, and it feels like a punch to the heart. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve done bad things, but I—you aren’t bad. I’ve never thought that.”

Nathaniel’s face twitches and he pulls his lips tight, forcing his face to remain steady. But his eyes are too wide, his lips trembling, his hands clenched in his lap. Nicholas can tell.

It bursts out of him before he can stop, sticking in his throat painfully like something sharp forcing its way up. His voice cracks.

“Then why did you leave?”

Nicholas looks stricken, like he might just crumble, and then he all but launches forward and pulls Nathaniel into a hug. Tight and fierce and trembling.

He squeezes his eyes shut, and Nathaniel shudders in his arms, shoulders curling inwards.

“I won’t leave again,” Nicholas swears, rocking them back and forth a little. It shouldn’t be soothing, such a childish gesture, but it is, it is. “I won’t. I was young, and scared, and—I just felt so alone and I didn’t know how to talk about it, how to get away from feeling—controlled—”

Nathaniel flinches, almost pulls away, but Nicholas holds on. “—but it wasn’t—I never wanted—I didn’t want it to be forever.”

“You wanted away from me,” Nathaniel says, and it hurts, it hurts.

“I was young,” Nicholas repeats helplessly. “I didn’t—I didn’t know what to do. Nathaniel, they—they shouldn’t have separated us. Heavens, if any of the children were having problems like this, they’d—they’d come to us. It’s—it’s a guardian’s responsibility, they were the adults—”

He sighs, then squeezes him tighter, and he sounds so, so tired. “It’s my fault, too,” he says quietly, “but—I—I talked about it with—well, it doesn’t matter, just… she’s right. There were adults in that situation, we—we were both just kids, Nathaniel. It isn’t fair.”

Somehow, he sounds more devastated at this than anything else. It isn’t fair. We were kids.  

“You were only a child, too,” Nicholas says, sounding small and tired, and he buries his face in Nathaniel’s shoulder. “I know. I know. You said—do you remember what you said?”

“Should have been me,” Nathaniel echoes hollowly.

“But you were only a child,” Nicholas says again, like he’s reminding himself, even though he still sounds so hurt. “And—and. Nathaniel. Nathaniel, they didn’t choose me because I was better. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Then why? Nathaniel wants to scream, but he doesn’t.

(He knows it’s not what Nicholas is going to say, but he can’t help but think it: no, he didn’t do anything wrong. He simply was wrong.)

“They just—they wanted a quiet child,” Nicholas says, lifting his head but not pulling away. “They wanted low-maintenance. Easy. And—well. I didn’t take up much space. I didn’t eat too much.”

Oh.

“It wasn’t you,” Nicholas says again. “It was them.”

Nathaniel lets himself lean into the embrace more, lets his head fall on Nicholas’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Nicky,” he whispers, finally. “For everything.”

He is. He’s got enough regrets to burn through his chest. He’s been angry and hurt and running for so long, he’d truly let himself believe he was wholly and completely right, that all of the means were justified by the ends. And now he was sitting in the ruins he’d made.

“I’m sorry, too,” Nicholas says, and he says it sincerely, as if this is equally his fault, as if Nathaniel hadn’t burned the world down for a mistake he’d made when he was twelve.

But something selfish in Nathaniel settles under the apology, like it’s healing. He’d needed to hear it.

“…what if you can’t forgive me?” he says.

“Can you forgive me?” Nicholas counters.

“It’s not the same.”

“Maybe not,” says Nicholas. “But can you?”

Nathaniel pulls away to meet his gaze. Nicholas is staring, eyes wide and dark and sad.

No, is on his lips, but I want to.

For decades, he’s carried this.

“Yes,” he blurts out, and he’s a little shocked to realize he means it. “Yes. I forgive you. I forgive you, Nicholas.”

Nicholas actually looks shocked, like Nathaniel had just slapped him.

“…oh,” he says.

“What if you can’t forgive me?” Curtain repeats. “You don’t owe it to me. You’re right. I’ve done too much.”

“I don’t know,” Nicholas admits quietly. “But—we’ll figure it out together. Okay?”

“What about your friends?” Nathaniel says, almost desperately. “What if it’s a choice?”

Nicholas blinks. “Are you aski—”

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” Curtain snaps, “But you’re right. I’ve hurt them, too. They have no reason to forgive me.”

Nicholas—his hands still on his shoulders, and he squeezes gently. “Nathaniel,” he says, “I’ve already talked to them. They’re not asking me to choose, either.”

There’s a slight tension in his eyes like he still is genuinely shocked like this, like he’s guiltily glad, and Nathaniel finds he shares in that guilty relief.

“I don’t know if they’ll forgive you, either,” he says. “But—we’ll figure it out together. I’m not leaving again. Okay?” He gives a little shake for emphasis, and Nathaniel nearly laughs, small and relieved.

Nathaniel wipes away the tears on his face with his sleeve. “…okay,” he says.

“Good,” says Nicholas. His hands slip from Nathaniel’s shoulders and he turns to look up again. “Oh,” he says. “You see that?”

Nathaniel blinks and turns his gaze to the sky.

“The north star is very bright tonight,” his brother says, and he smiles.

He can't help but smile back, small and uncharacteristically uncertain. And they look up to the stars together.

25 ("I know you have no reason to trust me. But please... I'm asking you to anyway.") + mr benedict & rhonda (ao3.)

The thing is, Rhonda actually hears about Mr. Benedict before she meets him.

And unlike Milligan, the rumors she hears aren’t so kind.

He’s gone off the deep end, I’m afraid, she hears someone laugh, all tin-foil conspiracies…

Crazy, they whisper behind hands at parties, hiding tipsy grins, eccentric geniuses, you know, that kind of brain has a price—

(She never actually hears what crazy things he believes, but conspiracy theorist has certain implications to it, doesn’t it?)

Still, it doesn’t prepare her for meeting the man.

He does, unfortunately, look exactly like his reputation had painted him: curls a disheveled mess, gesturing wildly, voice pitchy with distress.

But what really strikes her is the very real fright in his voice.

“Please,” he says, and he looks almost terrified, “Please, Miss Kazembe, don’t go to that island.”

There’s no reason to be unkind.

“Mr. Benedict,” she says, “I’m afraid I’m on official business. I can’t simply not go.”

That isn’t entirely true, actually. But she’s not about to admit that.

There’s something fishy about that school, and she’s going to figure it out. That’s what a good aspiring journalist does, even if no one has hired her yet: looks for the truth.

“I know you have no reason to trust me,” Mr. Benedict says, “But please, please. I’m asking you to anyway. Just—just for today. It’s vital, you’re—you’re in danger.”

If she were a cruel person, she might say from what? aliens? but she isn’t, even if she’s a little exhausted.

Gently, she says, “It’s a school.”

Not a cult, or a landing site for aliens, or some sort of conspiracy of a secret government.

“It’s something more,” he says. “People are going missing, and no one’s looking for them. Why does a school need security that tight? Why does a school take up so much power? Why are they hiring scientists, and not just any scientists, but chemists and neurosurgeons? Why is there no oversight on their curriculum, their teachers, their anything? Why is a school so shrouded in mystery I can’t find the headmaster’s name?”

When she stares, stricken—because this, this isn’t crazy at all, this was, at least partially, exactly what she was looking into—he says, hopelessly, “Please. The last people who went there—I tried to warn them, too, but they either—they go missing, or they never leave the island. They’re on employment records but its impossible to contact them. But no one seems to care!” His hands wave wildly and his voice cracks. “Something is wrong.”

I don’t want you to go missing too, seems to be what he’s getting at, and the desperation in his tone says this has never worked before.

She snaps her bag shut. “What do you think is causing it?” she says, and he—he stares at her for a moment.

“…what?” he says.

“What do you think is causing it?” she repeats, slower. “The missing people. Human trafficking?”

He blinks. “I—no, but—you. you believe me?”

Rhonda’s lips purse with sympathy. “I’m not actually a prospective teacher,” she admits. “Well, I have a background, but—I’m investigating the disappearances.”

The naked relief on his face almost feels like an invasion to see, and he slumps with practically his whole body.

“Oh,” he says. “oh. Oh, thank god.”

And then he collapses.

She gives a shout of alarm, but a man seems to almost materialize out of nowhere—he’d been lurking around the corner, she realizes—and launches forward to catch him, as if he’d been expecting this.

He straightens, awkwardly holding Benedict up, and gives her a nod of greeting. He’s… large. Long, neat hair, and kind eyes.

“I—wh—” before she can sputter out a full question, Benedict jerks awake again.

“Oh! Oh—I—oh, thank you, Milligan, I apologize,” he says, and the man—Milligan, apparently—helps steady him, acknowledging the thanks with another silent nod. “How long was I—?”

“Only a few seconds,” he says, almost reassuringly, and Benedict sighs with relief. “Oh, good,” he says. Then he turns back to Rhonda, who’s gaping, as if remembering she’s there.

“Oh,” he says, “oh, I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t frighten you—”

“You. Did you… faint?”

“No, no,” he says quickly, waving his hands, “no, I just—I have type one narcolepsy with cataplexy. That means—”

“Oh,” she says, “Okay, right. Sorry. I understand now.”

He blinks, taken aback by her easy understanding and acceptance, then gives her a small, hesitant smile.

“My apologies,” he says again, “Milligan here is—uh. Security, I suppose. And a friend of mine.”

Milligan nods—he’d stepped back, both physically, and seamlessly away from her attention—and she doesn’t quite know what to say.

“We have, uh, one other,” Mr. Benedict says, “she’s—hmm, she’s. not here right now. But if you like—you. you could meet her? And we could talk?”

He peers at her hopefully.

This is such a bad idea. She doesn’t even know these people.

“We can meet in a public place,” he adds helpfully. “Although. Um. Maybe not too public, uh, the kidnapping attempts are getting. a little hard to avoid.”

Oh, what the fuck.

“The kidnapping attempts?”

“It’s a long story,” he admits, sounding a little sheepish. “I—I’m more than willing to share, I’d—I’d invite you back to my home, but somehow I feel that’s. probably. mm. worse?”

“Can you give me the rundown?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

He winces. “I’d really rather not—honestly, I’ve never gotten this far, and I’d really rather not scare you off now.”

“Hm,” she says. “That’s encouraging, eh?”

He hunches a little. “No one believes me,” he says. “I know how it sounds. But I do have—proof. Not enough, not—but. it’s not nothing. Um, actually, can I ask you something really quick?”

She blinks. “You just did,” she says, almost automatically, because it’s a joke she and her roommate have shared too many times, and she almost apologizes, but he laughs, and as tired as it sounds, it’s also sincere.

“Ah, of course,” he says, with real humor, “may I ask you a third question, then, after this very one?”

“You may,” she says graciously, and he beams at her. It’s impossible not to smile back.

“Do you watch a lot of TV?”

The non-sequitur is so startling it surprises the smile off her face. “What?”

“Or radio,” he says, “do you listen to the radio a lot?”

“Uh, no,” she says, unsure what to even make of this, “I prefer books. TV gives me a bit of headache, to be honest.”

He beams again, brighter, and she thinks, relieved. “Wonderful,” he says. “I mean, no judgement, it’s not—it’s only—well, it’s too complicated to explain right now.”

“Oh..kay,” she says.

“Here, meet—can you meet me outside the Monk Building, in town? Tomorrow, at, say—ah, do you have a preference?”

“No,” she says, “not really.”

“Noon then, does that sound fine? Noon, yes,” he mutters and writes something down on a pad he’d produced from some pocket, scrawl loopy and lopsided. “Alright. Here.”

He rips out the page and shoves it at her. “Don’t tell anyone,” he says, “Please. For the safety of both of us.”

“Can you—can you at least tell me what this is about?” she says.

“…The Emergency,” Mr. Benedict says, and he looks far more serious now. “It’s about the Emergency.”

Oh. That was… big.

She takes the paper. “I’ll see you then,” she says, with more confidence than she feels.

He smiles, nodding a little to punctuate this, and then turns to go.

“Mr. Benedict,” she calls after a moment, and he pauses and turns back.

“…I’m trusting you,” she says, and holds up the paper. She thinks maybe he needs to hear it—hear that someone doesn’t think he’s crazy, someone other than his strange friend(s?).

He hesitates, eyes widening, then smiles, small and unsure. “And I, you,” he says. And then he sweeps out the door, and Milligan follows quietly behind him, eyeing her as he leaves.

She looks down at the piece of paper in her hands—an address, scrawled next to “NOON” and the initials “N.B.”, and then a little smiley face. He’d added a smiley face.

It seems Mr. Nicholas Benedict wasn’t crazy at all. But whether he was onto something was another question.

She rolled the paper up between her fingers and hummed. Whatever the case, things were about to get a lot more interesting.

[global-education]

🌟 The Nearest Known Stars to the Sun 🌟

Our universe is a vast expanse filled with countless stars, each with its unique characteristics and mysteries. Among them, the stars closest to our own Sun hold a special fascination. In this cosmic journey, we will introduce you to some of the nearest known stars to the Sun, unveiling the celestial neighbors that dot our night sky. 🌌✨

Proxima Centauri: Let's start with the closest known star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri. It's a red dwarf, located a mere 4.24 light-years away. Proxima Centauri is often linked to the Alpha Centauri system.

Alpha Centauri A and B: These are the two other stars in the Alpha Centauri system. Alpha Centauri A is similar to our Sun, while Alpha Centauri B is slightly smaller and cooler.

Barnard's Star: At just 5.96 light-years away, Barnard's Star is another neighbor worth noting. It's a red dwarf known for its high proper motion across the sky.

Luhman 16: This binary star system consists of two brown dwarfs, making it the third-closest known stellar system to the Sun.

Sirius: Known as the "Dog Star," Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. It's only 8.6 light-years away and part of the Canis Major constellation.

Epsilon Eridani: About 10.5 light-years away, Epsilon Eridani is a star that's somewhat similar to the Sun and known for its debris disk.

Tau Ceti: Located 11.9 light-years away, Tau Ceti is a Sun-like star with a rich history in science fiction.

Ross 154: This red dwarf star is about 9.7 light-years away and can be found in the Sagittarius constellation.

Wolf 359: At just 7.8 light-years away, Wolf 359 is a red dwarf and one of the smallest known stars.

61 Cygni: This binary star system is about 11.4 light-years away and consists of two K-type dwarf stars.

Lalande 21185: A nearby red dwarf, Lalande 21185, is approximately 8.3 light-years from Earth.

Gliese 581: This star system, located 20.3 light-years away, gained attention due to its potentially habitable exoplanets.

Altair: Found in the Aquila constellation, Altair is only 16.7 light-years away and is one of the vertices of the Summer Triangle.

Vega: Part of the same Summer Triangle, Vega is about 25.3 light-years away and is one of the brightest stars in the sky.

Fomalhaut: At 25 light-years away, Fomalhaut is a young star with a prominent debris disk.

Pollux: One of the twins in the Gemini constellation, Pollux is a giant star situated 34.8 light-years away.

Deneb: Deneb is a luminous supergiant, part of the Summer Triangle, and lies about 2,600 light-years away.

Arcturus: A bright star in the Bootes constellation, Arcturus is approximately 37 light-years away.

Aldebaran: Located in Taurus, Aldebaran is an orange giant star about 65 light-years distant.

Antares: This red supergiant is the heart of Scorpius and resides roughly 550 light-years away.

Betelgeuse: In the Orion constellation, Betelgeuse is a massive, reddish star located around 724 light-years away.

Rigel: Another prominent star in Orion, Rigel is a blue supergiant approximately 860 light-years from Earth.

VY Canis Majoris: Among the largest known stars, VY Canis Majoris is an estimated 3,900 light-years away.

Polaris: The North Star, Polaris, guides travelers and sits around 433 light-years from us.

Spica: Found in Virgo, Spica is a binary star system about 260 light-years away.

These celestial neighbors remind us of the vastness of our universe and the beauty of the night sky. 🌌✨

[moondonky]

Prepared

Prepared for alot of things, but actually only prepared for one thing, sumthing I don't talk about, a secret of the wild... its not for If shit hits the fan, or a financial collapse, or sum world war, or alien takeover, or floods, or supply shortage, or a pandemic, or sum mad scientist experiment, or power outage,, tho most of those things might happen, nothing compared to what I prepare for... gotta be able to move quickly, an earth cycle not written in history, when the continents start to move and compasses start gyrating, follow the animals, they know what to do...

Effin millenial why not.. binary twin at parahelion can cause the whole solar system to flip, right side up again, can change the earth's spin, sum things you might have missed, cracks are already forming, a chunk of the crust has sunk into mantle, magnetics are moving, earth's wobble is changing, currents are shifting, north star is switching, except it will not be perseus, something Noone talks about for a reason... the only thing that will not change is how the moon looks at you... kingdew

[imjustexistingtbh]

hellooooo

can we hear some Neat Space Facts please???

yeah of course!!!

most stars we’ve observed orbit in a binary system - our sun is actually an outlier in this facet - so it’s hypothesized that the sun may have a “long lost twin” that was drifted out of the solar system during its formation 

our solar system is neatly split up into terrestrial planets near the sun and gas giants farther out, and for a long time, scientists thought that this was the standard for solar systems. however, our solar system is a huge outlier! for example, WASP-96b, the exoplanet that webb just got atmospheric information for, is extremely close to its star and orbits it in 3 days. 

before newton, (and even after) many scientists thought that there was some invisible force in spacetime called Ether that was like a flowing river of force causing the planets to orbit the way they did. 

the north star, polaris, is actually a triple star system, with polaris Aa, b, and Ab orbiting each other 

gravity is actually caused by the warping of spacetime. imagine it being like one of those funnel coin things, with a massive object at the center (stars, galaxies, black holes, etc) causing spacetime to bend, and for a smaller object like the coin to fall towards the center in an elliptical orbit. this is basically an extremely simplified version of the theory of general relativity. 

also! if you want more space content (shameless self promo lol) ive made a space blog @aspaceinthecosmos so you can follow that if you want more space facts :)))

[art-thropologist]

Cause & Æffect: art that speaks out, Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, June 14th, 2020 — August 2nd, 2020.

In celebration of the centennial of women’s suffrage, the State Museum gathered together works from 14 different women artists who have lived, worked, or were born in Indiana. The exhibitions grants space to examine how art is used as a tool to speak out challenging topics such as mental health, the death penalty, migrant labor, and cancer. In doing so, visitors are asked to open themselves to conversations with each work and ponder how they can use art to create emotional affect and real-world effect.

Anila Quayyam Agha’s Flight of a Thousand Birds (2019) consists of a single stainless steel disk suspended before a blank wall, casting three overlapping shadows behind and two brilliant reflections before it.

The piece, in the didactic text, is meant to discuss the mingling of Agha’s multifaith and Pakistani/North American culture. The play between light/shadow embodies how there are identities that glance beneath our actions and our skin and also those that we reflect out to be seen. There is one person but the shadows they cast are indistinguishable as being from separate entities. Yet the identity we chose to show can be distorted by our environment or the situation in which we find ourselves in just as our shadows can. The circular and triadic geometry echoes the all-encompassing yet divisionary aspects of these facets. Though Agha’s piece references religion, these are not religious symbols like the crescent or the cross, choosing instead to preference aniconic influence. Agha gives no definite place to either side of her identity, instead creating a tangled after image of movement. Like a flock of birds taking flight, these patterns are constantly mingling and changing, just as our own sense of self shifts with the sun.

Mary Beth Edelson, on the other hand, takes an iconic masterpiece (Da Vinci’s The Last Supper) and recasts the apostles with (at the time, living) American women artists in Some Living American Women Artists/The Last Supper (1972). 

Surrounding the altered print are the headshots of over 60 more women artists who have historically/culturally/academically not been given place in the art historical cannon. Georgia O’Keeffe takes the honored role of Jesus at the table. While not the first American woman artist by a long shot, she was one to bring them into the status of “Art Star”. Edelson’s piece is controversial in its appropriation of religious imagery for the discussion of feminism. If one is familiar with Linda Nochlin’s essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" a secondary interpretation arises; that the only way for these women to hold a place in the museum is for them to recapitulate the styles and performance of accepted male masters. Edelson’s print then can be read as an outcry against the lack of representation of female artists in museums (I personally would not be surprised if Edelson admitted to being a member of the Guerrilla Girls). Notably, none of the 13 artists representing the apostles belong to the traditional painting genre. They span the Expressionist, Surrealist, and Contemporary which is a solid rebuke against the Academic style represented by Da Vinci. It is a critique of the axiological system of the present art historical survey. Edelson also contributed story gathering boxes for visitors to fill out and start a conversation about what our mothers/fathers taught us about our gender and the binary opposite gender.

Lingering in the center of the gallery are two pieces about sexual violence. Lori Miles and Jeanette Johnson-Licon’s The Elephant in the Room (2015) is indeed an elephant in the room. 

It is not obtrusively large or even within sightline when first approaching the gallery. Big, yes. Yet even the didactic calls the sculpture a ‘little elephant’. The pachyderm is made of plexiglass and a rolling wooden cart. The former material supplies a paradoxical presence. Elephants are massive and durable. Glass is typically not. The animal is here, and yet it is transparent. Present and invisible. A specter that haunts college campuses across the country. The Elephant embodies the conversations around sexual violence; the violence itself is ubiquitous, undeniably real, and clear to see, however that same transparency belies the greater reluctance to confront it, instead seeing right through it as if it is not there. The animal is minimized and rendered into slices that when removed from the whole become unrecognizable. One might argue that the choice to use glass is to represent how sexual violence is a delicate issue that must be treated with a feather-light touch. We don’t want to shatter the glass and cut ourselves on the pieces. But plexiglass is one of the strongest forms of glass available. It is used in shielding because of its resistance to fracture underscoring that the issue of sexual violence itself does not warrant such tedious handling. Of course, survivors deserve to be handled carefully. Not in the way a vase does, but in the way a living creature does. With respect, with gentleness and compassion. Afterall, when treated aggressively, elephants are known to stampede.

Beside The Elephant is a participatory installation by Monica Myer. The Clothesline (1978 - ongoing) began in Mexico City and has traveled across the continent to the heart of the heartland.

Its presence consists of two pink drying racks with lengths of nylon line running around the perimeter, pink cards are pinned to the nylon like laundry. The rectangular dimensions recall a child’s twin bed. Each card details the experience of sexual violence of an anonymous participant. A table is provided with blank cards for visitors to contribute their own testimonies. While there are other large installations in the gallery, the near neon pink of the paper draws the eye to it. This piece demands attention. The words scream silently from the paper. The Clothesline comes into conversation with The Elephant, the former laying bare the trauma that the latter represents. Together they take space and make an immovable statement.

This brings me to the only disappointment of the exhibition. Cause & Æffect presents itself as a celebration of the suffrage centennial…online. The gallery itself makes no mention of it. There is no signage, no didactic to clearly state such. 

The lack of discussion around suffrage and the lack of acknowledgement that this is the centennial of white women’s suffrage. Black women would not get the vote until 1964 and First Nations would still be barred in some states until 1962. Given that there are several pieces in the exhibition specifically about elections and ethnicity and the ability of visitors to see the artefacts of suffrage one level down, the absence of any concrete reference to suffrage undermines that aspect of the exhibition as a whole.

Overall, Cause & Æffect challenges visitors to re-evaluate the role of art as a tool of inspiring change. It asks us what we will stand for, what we will speak out against, and how we will speak out for our cause? What visitors are presented with as a whole is a garden of community, pride, and revolution.

Homeschool/Field trip Activities

Elementary: What do you think makes a good neighbor? How can you be a good neighbor to your classmates? (House Life Project, 2017); What is a cause you care a lot about? How would you use art to talk about it?

Middle: Pick a cause represented by a work and write a paragraph about how it relates to one of the displays in the Natural History or Cultural galleries; fill out a form for the gender equality box, then look through other responses and journal your reaction to them; create a piece of art that reacts to the exhibition or a piece within it; you are a member of the suffrage movement, what art do you create to speak out for your cause?

High: Pick a cause represented by a work and write a page about how it relates to one of the displays in the Natural History or Cultural galleries. Include primary sources to support your thesis; write a paragraph about which of these works speaks loudest to you emotionally? Personally? Ethically? Locally?; what other times has art been used as a tool to speak out on a global stage? Why was it effective/affective? How did it invoke such responses? (For example Le Radeau de la Méduse (1818-19) by Theodore Gericault.); react to The Elephant and The Clothesline in whatever medium you feel is best.

[andromeda1023]

Astronomers using the GBT have discovered the most massive neutron star to date, a rapidly spinning pulsar approximately 4,600 light-years from Earth. This record-breaking object is teetering on the edge of existence, approaching the theoretical maximum mass possible for a neutron star.

Neutron stars – the compressed remains of massive stars gone supernova – are the densest “normal” objects in the known universe. (Black holes are technically denser, but far from normal.) Just a single sugar-cube worth of neutron-star material would weigh 100 million tons here on Earth, or about the same as the entire human population. Though astronomers and physicists have studied and marveled at these objects for decades, many mysteries remain about the nature of their interiors: Do crushed neutrons become “superfluid” and flow freely? Do they breakdown into a soup of subatomic quarks or other exotic particles? What is the tipping point when gravity wins out over matter and forms a black hole?

A team of astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) has brought us closer to finding the answers.

The researchers, members of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, discovered that a rapidly rotating millisecond pulsar, called J0740+6620, is the most massive neutron star ever measured, packing 2.17 times the mass of our Sun into a sphere only 30 kilometers across. This measurement approaches the limits of how massive and compact a single object can become without crushing itself down into a black hole. Recent work involving gravitational waves observed from colliding neutron stars by LIGO suggests that 2.17 solar masses might be very near that limit.

“Neutron stars are as mysterious as they are fascinating,” said Thankful Cromartie, a graduate student at the University of Virginia and Grote Reber pre-doctoral fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. “These city-sized objects are essentially ginormous atomic nuclei. They are so massive that their interiors take on weird properties. Finding the maximum mass that physics and nature will allow can teach us a great deal about this otherwise inaccessible realm in astrophysics.”

Pulsars get their name because of the twin beams of radio waves they emit from their magnetic poles. These beams sweep across space in a lighthouse-like fashion. Some rotate hundreds of times each second. Since pulsars spin with such phenomenal speed and regularity, astronomers can use them as the cosmic equivalent of atomic clocks. Such precise timekeeping helps astronomers study the nature of spacetime, measure the masses of stellar objects, and improve their understanding of general relativity.

In the case of this binary system, which is nearly edge-on in relation to Earth, this cosmic precision provided a pathway for astronomers to calculate the mass of the two stars.

As the ticking pulsar passes behind its white dwarf companion, there is a subtle (on the order of 10 millionths of a second) delay in the arrival time of the signals. This  phenomenon is known as “Shapiro Delay.” In essence, gravity from the white dwarf star slightly warps the space surrounding it, in accordance with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This warping means the pulses from the rotating neutron star have to travel just a little bit farther as they wend their way around the distortions of spacetime caused by the white dwarf.

Astronomers can use the amount of that delay to calculate the mass of the white dwarf. Once the mass of one of the co-orbiting bodies is known, it is a relatively straightforward process to accurately determine the mass of the other.

Cromartie is the principal author on a paper accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy. The GBT observations were research related to her doctoral thesis, which proposed observing this system at two special points in their mutual orbits to accurately calculate the mass of the neutron star.

“The orientation of this binary star system created a fantastic cosmic laboratory,” said Scott Ransom, an astronomer at NRAO and coauthor on the paper. “Neutron stars have this tipping point where their interior densities get so extreme that the force of gravity overwhelms even the ability of neutrons to resist further collapse. Each “most massive” neutron star we find  brings us closer to identifying that tipping point and helping us to understand the physics of matter at these mindboggling densities.”

These observation were also part of a larger observing campaign known as NANOGrav, short for the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, which is a Physics Frontiers Center funded by the NSF.

Link for video and more info: https://greenbankobservatory.org/most-massive-neutron-star-ever-detected/?fbclid=IwAR3YnnjEHRlNad3LPP_f9aHEr3JdFD75yjxq-yaVD3OijILKI0WuBmJvTEs

[sometimeswritingsometimesdying]

ok but like

imagine if you will, Logan giving people he loves stars

Patton would get VY Canis Majores, which is the biggest known star. also, it’s part of the constellation Canis Major which idk why but i think fits Pat

Roman would get either Sirius, which is the brightest star, or Venus. i know it isn’t a star, but it’s the first “star” you see every night and again, idk why but i feel it would fit him

or, he could give the twins a binary star

Dee would get Alpha centauri B, as it’s part of a two-star system (so like double faced kinda) and it can’t be seen at first glance, or with a naked eye at all

Virgil would get one of the pole stars, so either the north or the south pole stars. they’re the point of reference that scientists use to see how much time has passed, because the pole stars will always remain in the same place, while the rest of the night sky appears to move as time goes by. don’t ask me why but this fits

and when he tells them, they all feel very touched although they don’t really understand any of it

[sciencebulletin]

Most massive neutron star ever detected, almost too massive to exist

Neutron stars -- the compressed remains of massive stars gone supernova -- are the densest "normal" objects in the known universe. (Black holes are technically denser, but far from normal.) Just a single sugar-cube worth of neutron-star material would weigh 100 million tons here on Earth, or about the same as the entire human population. Though astronomers and physicists have studied and marveled at these objects for decades, many mysteries remain about the nature of their interiors: Do crushed neutrons become "superfluid" and flow freely? Do they breakdown into a soup of subatomic quarks or other exotic particles? What is the tipping point when gravity wins out over matter and forms a black hole? A team of astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) has brought us closer to finding the answers. The researchers, members of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, discovered that a rapidly rotating millisecond pulsar, called J0740+6620, is the most massive neutron star ever measured, packing 2.17 times the mass of our Sun into a sphere only 30 kilometers across. This measurement approaches the limits of how massive and compact a single object can become without crushing itself down into a black hole. Recent work involving gravitational waves observed from colliding neutron stars by LIGO suggests that 2.17 solar masses might be very near that limit. "Neutron stars are as mysterious as they are fascinating," said Thankful Cromartie, a graduate student at the University of Virginia and Grote Reber pre-doctoral fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. "These city-sized objects are essentially ginormous atomic nuclei. They are so massive that their interiors take on weird properties. Finding the maximum mass that physics and nature will allow can teach us a great deal about this otherwise inaccessible realm in astrophysics." Pulsars get their name because of the twin beams of radio waves they emit from their magnetic poles. These beams sweep across space in a lighthouse-like fashion. Some rotate hundreds of times each second. Since pulsars spin with such phenomenal speed and regularity, astronomers can use them as the cosmic equivalent of atomic clocks. Such precise timekeeping helps astronomers study the nature of spacetime, measure the masses of stellar objects, and improve their understanding of general relativity. In the case of this binary system, which is nearly edge-on in relation to Earth, this cosmic precision provided a pathway for astronomers to calculate the mass of the two stars. As the ticking pulsar passes behind its white dwarf companion, there is a subtle (on the order of 10 millionths of a second) delay in the arrival time of the signals. This phenomenon is known as "Shapiro Delay." In essence, gravity from the white dwarf star slightly warps the space surrounding it, in accordance with Einstein's general theory of relativity. This warping means the pulses from the rotating neutron star have to travel just a little bit farther as they wend their way around the distortions of spacetime caused by the white dwarf. Astronomers can use the amount of that delay to calculate the mass of the white dwarf. Once the mass of one of the co-orbiting bodies is known, it is a relatively straightforward process to accurately determine the mass of the other. Cromartie is the principal author on a paper accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy. The GBT observations were research related to her doctoral thesis, which proposed observing this system at two special points in their mutual orbits to accurately calculate the mass of the neutron star. "The orientation of this binary star system created a fantastic cosmic laboratory," said Scott Ransom, an astronomer at NRAO and coauthor on the paper. "Neutron stars have this tipping point where their interior densities get so extreme that the force of gravity overwhelms even the ability of neutrons to resist further collapse. Each "most massive" neutron star we find brings us closer to identifying that tipping point and helping us to understand the physics of matter at these mindboggling densities." These observation were also part of a larger observing campaign known as NANOGrav, short for the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, which is a Physics Frontiers Center funded by the NSF. Provided by: Green Bank Observatory More Information: H. T. Cromartie, E. Fonseca, S. M. Ransom, P. B. Demorest, Z. Arzoumanian, H. Blumer, P. R. Brook, M. E. DeCesar, T. Dolch, J. A. Ellis, R. D. Ferdman, E. C. Ferrara, N. Garver-Daniels, P. A. Gentile, M. L. Jones, M. T. Lam, D. R. Lorimer, R. S. Lynch, M. A. McLaughlin, C. Ng, D. J. Nice, T. T. Pennucci, R. Spiewak, I. H. Stairs, K. Stovall, J. K. Swiggum, W. W. Zhu. Relativistic Shapiro delay measurements of an extremely massive millisecond pulsar. Nature Astronomy (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-019-0880-2 Image: Neutron star illustration (stock image). Credit: © Peter Jurik / Adobe Stock Read the full article

[astrogeoguy]

Sunday Brings a Pre-Christmas Supermoon, Andromeda loves Perseus among the Stars, and the Geminid Meteors Germinate!

(Above: This image of the Owl Cluster in Cassiopeia was taken by Ron Brecher of Guelph. If you squint a bit, the critter’s shape is more apparent. It’s leaning to the left. Link: astrodoc.ca/ngc457-e-t-cluster/)

Astronomy Skylights for this week (from December 3rd, 2017) by Chris Vaughan. (Feel free to pass this along to friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics.) I post these with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are Eastern Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested joining me on a guided field trip to York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory, or another in your area, visit www.astrogeo.ca. 

If you’d like to read my summary of all the doings in the sky for December, it’s on Space.com here. And my latest Mobile Astronomy column, all about observing full moons every month, is here. 

Public Events

On Monday evenings, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party - broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. On Wednesday evenings after dark, they offer free public viewing through their telescopes. If it’s cloudy, the astronomers give tours and presentations. Details are here. 

On Thursday, December 7 at 8 pm, the free U of T AstroTour presents Gravitational Waves: The Sirens of the Universe by PhD Student Catherine Woodford. Details are here. 

If it’s sunny this Saturday, December 9th from 10 am to noon, astronomers from the RASC Toronto Centre will be setting up outside the main doors of the Ontario Science Centre for Solar Observing. Come and see the Sun in detail through special equipment designed to view it safely. This is a monthly event that is free to the public (details here), but parking and admission fees inside the Science Centre will still apply. Check the RASC Toronto Centre website or their Facebook page for the Go or No-Go notification. 

A Geminid Meteor Shower Early Heads Up

The Geminid Meteor Shower, one of the most spectacular of the year, kicks off on December 4. It won’t peak until next Thursday, December 14, but you can keep an eye out for a few, especially later this week when the moon has waned. Geminid meteors are commonly bright and intensely colored, and slower moving than average. 

(Above: Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus (at centre) are surrounded by Perseus (below them), their daughter Princess Andromeda (to their lower right), the winged steed Pegasus (to their upper right), and Cetus the Sea-Monster (at the extreme right). Here, the sky is shown for 6 pm local time in early December annually. The Milky Way passes through the family of constellations.)

Andromeda’s Family – a Story in the Stars

The late fall and winter evening sky features a group of easy-to-see constellation that are the characters in a grand story from Greek mythology - Princess Andromeda and the hero Perseus. Over the next few Skylights, I’ll tour the individual constellations – telling you how to find them, and highlight some the best sights in binoculars and telescopes. Once upon a time… 

In Greek mythology, Cassiopeia was the queen of Ethiopia, and married to King Cepheus. When Cassiopeia boasted of her daughter Andromeda’s unrivalled beauty, the sea nymphs took issue with this and asked Poseidon to unleash the fury of Cetus the Sea-monster on Ethiopia’s coast. To appease Poseidon, Cepheus offered to chain Andromeda to the seashore, where Cetus the Sea-monster would take her and return to the sea. Just in the nick of time, the hero Perseus, fresh from defeating the Gorgon Medusa and still carrying her head in a bag, flew to Andromeda’s rescue on the winged horse Pegasus. The couple lived happily ever after, but the queen and her husband were banished to the stars, never resting as they circle the spinning north celestial pole. Later, Andromeda, Perseus and Pegasus, and Cetus were all given places in the sky. 

This time of year is ideal for taking in the sights of the constellation Cassiopeia. Its distinctive crooked “W” of five bright stars is situated high the northeastern evening sky. Cassiopeia is circumpolar – so close to the North Celestial Pole (and therefore Polaris) that, for Canadians and other high latitude observers, it never sets. 

This time of year, in mid-evening, you’ll find Cassiopeia oriented sideways, with the broken end “dangling” below the rest. Many cultures have interpreted this set of bright stars. The Inuit saw a blubber oil lamp and stand. The Navajo saw a female form too, albeit upside down. Biblical scholars replaced the queen of Ethiopia with Bathsheba, Mary Magdalene, and others. 

(Above: Cassiopeia’s major stars and deep sky objects (small symbols) are shown here. Clusters are visible in small telescopes while larger scopes and dark skies are needed reveal the nebulae.)

Cassiopeia is depicted as sitting in a chair, her hand combing her hair. The brightest star, second from the top, is named Shedir, Arabic for “breast”. It’s a giant star, 229 light-years from Earth. In binoculars, you’ll see that it’s an orange-ish star with a small companion. The second brightest star, named Caph (“hand”), is at the top of the “W” and is white, 54 light-years away. The fourth star from the top is named Ruchbah (“knee”). It’s a variable brightness eclipsing binary star that dims when an orbiting dimmer companion star partially blocks its light every 25 months. 

The star marking the queen’s waist, in the middle of the constellation doesn’t have an Arabic name. Instead it is designated Gamma Cas, using the third Greek letter for the third brightest star in Cassiopeia.  It also has the unofficial nickname Navi, which is Apollo astronaut Gus Grissom’s middle name spelled backwards. This star is also variable due to a high rate of spin and periodic gas ejection. The last of the five stars marks Cassiopeia’s foot. Its nickname, Segin, is of unknown origin. This modest looking star is actually a blue-white giant star about 440 light-years away. It’s about six times the mass of our Sun, but 2,500 times more luminous! 

The thinning outer edge of the Milky Way passes directly through Cassiopeia, meaning that the area is rich in interesting objects and star fields. One of my favorite objects can be seen in binoculars or a telescope. It’s a cluster of stars called the Owl Cluster (or ET Cluster or Dragonfly Cluster). It consists of two prominent yellow stars that form the eyes. A sprinkling of dimmer stars forms the owl’s body and feet, and two curving chains of stars define upswept wings. Be aware that the critter is positioned with its head to the right. This will be the same in binoculars, but your telescope will flip things around depending on the type. It is located by taking Navi and Ruchbah and making them the two vertices of a right angle triangle. The cluster sits at the third vertex, where the 90 degree corner is. It’s about four finger widths to the lower right of Navi – as if the queen is bouncing a baby owl on her knee! 

By about 10 pm local time, the critter will rotate upright. The cluster was discovered by William Herschel in 1787 and is more than 7,900 light-years away! Other astronomical names for the object include NGC 457 (from the New General Catalogue) and Caldwell 13. 

Large telescope owners can look for the large nebulas that reside in Cassiopiea. Extending a line from Shedar to Caph by a distance equal to their separation brings you to the Bubble Nebula and Salt-and-Pepper Cluster. There’s a smaller nebula less than half a finger’s width below Navi. And near the bottom of the constellation’s official region are the spectacular Heart and Soul Nebulas. They sit only two degrees apart (two finger widths) and can be found only about a palm’s width to the lower right of the star Segin. 

While you’re gazing at that part of the sky, use the top three stars of Cassiopeia as an arrowhead that points directly at the great Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is approximately 1.5 fist widths (at arm’s length) from the tip of the arrow. At 2.5 million light years away, its faint smudge is among the farthest objects visible to unaided human eyes. Under dark skies, you might be able to detect its glowing patch spanning more than two finger widths across, or two full moon diameters. In actuality, it’s six moon diameters across! 

I’ll post a sky chart here. In a future Skylights, we’ll tour Perseus, Andromeda, and some other characters in our story.

(Above: The gorgeoous Heart Nebula in Cassiopeia as imaged by Ron Brecher. Link: astrodoc.ca/ic1805/) 

The Moon and Planets

Tonight (Sunday) brings us the December full moon, traditionally known as the Oak Moon, Cold Moon, Long Nights Moon, and the Moon before Yule. It rises at sunset and sets at sunrise and, because the full phase occurs on Sunday morning, it will be a little past full. Binoculars will reveal that the moon’s eastern edge (the right-hand side) is already rimmed with shadowed craters while the opposite side is not. Sunday’s full moon occurs less than one day before perigee, the point in the moon’s orbit when it is closest to Earth, making Sunday’s full moon the largest (about 7% larger than average) and brightest supermoon for 2017. 

(Above: The full moon is the best time to see the ray systems extending from the craters that lend them their names. A few of the largest are labelled in yellow.)

Just like the sun, the moon travels through (or at least near to) the constellations of the Zodiac. On each subsequent evening this week, the moon will slide eastward - through the top of Orion (the Hunter), the legs of Gemini (the Twins), past dim Cancer (the Crab), and into Leo (the Lion). It will also wane and rise about half an hour later each night. Last Quarter Phase, when the moon is half illuminated by the pre-dawn sun, occurs next Sunday about 3 am EST. Last quarter moons rise about midnight and can still be spotted in the southern morning sky in daytime.

Over the next few nights (Sunday through Wednesday), you might be able to catch a glimpse of Mercury low in the southwestern sky just before 5:20 pm local time. The speedy planet will also be sitting only two finger widths to the lower left of Saturn. Both planets are the same brightness. (I posted a sky chart here.) As the week unfolds, Mercury will drop sunward faster than Saturn, moving below the ringed planet on Thursday, and then racing out of sight by the weekend. Saturn sets about 5:30 pm local time this week, but it’s truly immersed in the evening twilight on its way to solar conjunction on December 21. Use binoculars to hunt for these two planets, but be careful to avoid the sun! 

Slow moving Uranus and Neptune are the only planets left in the evening sky, setting about 3:30 am and midnight local time respectively. Blue-green Uranus is midway between the two chains of stars that form the dim constellation of Pisces (the Fishes). A medium-bright star called Omicron Piscium sits about 2.5 finger widths to the lower left of Uranus and another star of comparable brightness called Mu Piscium is three fingers to the planet’s lower right. Later in the evening this triangle of two stars plus Uranus will be tipped towards the west. Tiny blue Neptune, only observable in a backyard telescope, is about half a finger’s width below the medium-bright star Hydor in Aquarius (the Water-Bearer). Look for them after the moon has waned a bit.

(Above: The pre-dawn sky features Mars, then Jupiter, and Venus, which is descending into the sun’s glare this week. Shown at 7 am local time.)

The most eye-catching planet nowadays is Jupiter, which rises in the eastern sky shortly before 5 am local time. The extremely bright planet is well above the horizon by dawn. Much dimmer and red-tinted, Mars, which will be rising about 3:40 am local time, is sitting 1.5 fist diameters to Jupiter’s upper right, about a palm’s width to the lower left of the bright star Spica in Virgo (the Maiden). Over the course of this week, Mars’ eastward orbital motion will carry it lower, so the separation between Mars and Jupiter will diminish steadily, until they “kiss” in early January! Finally, very bright Venus, is mirroring Saturn. It’s embedded in the eastern dawn twilight for about 45 minutes before sunrise, and will all but disappear after this week. I’ll post sky charts for the planets here.

Keep looking up to enjoy the sky! I love getting questions so, if you have any, send me a note.

[mitchbattros]

Most Massive Neutron Star Ever Detected, Almost Too Massive To Exist

Neutron stars -- the compressed remains of massive stars gone supernova -- are the densest "normal" objects in the known universe. (Black holes are technically denser, but far from normal.) Just a single sugar-cube worth of neutron-star material would weigh 100 million tons here on Earth, or about the same as the entire human population. Though astronomers and physicists have studied and marveled at these objects for decades, many mysteries remain about the nature of their interiors: Do crushed neutrons become "superfluid" and flow freely? Do they breakdown into a soup of subatomic quarks or other exotic particles? What is the tipping point when gravity wins out over matter and forms a black hole?

A team of astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) has brought us closer to finding the answers. The researchers, members of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, discovered that a rapidly rotating millisecond pulsar, called J0740+6620, is the most massive neutron star ever measured, packing 2.17 times the mass of our Sun into a sphere only 30 kilometers across. This measurement approaches the limits of how massive and compact a single object can become without crushing itself down into a black hole. Recent work involving gravitational waves observed from colliding neutron stars by LIGO suggests that 2.17 solar masses might be very near that limit. "Neutron stars are as mysterious as they are fascinating," said Thankful Cromartie, a graduate student at the University of Virginia and Grote Reber pre-doctoral fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. "These city-sized objects are essentially ginormous atomic nuclei. They are so massive that their interiors take on weird properties. Finding the maximum mass that physics and nature will allow can teach us a great deal about this otherwise inaccessible realm in astrophysics." Pulsars get their name because of the twin beams of radio waves they emit from their magnetic poles. These beams sweep across space in a lighthouse-like fashion. Some rotate hundreds of times each second. Since pulsars spin with such phenomenal speed and regularity, astronomers can use them as the cosmic equivalent of atomic clocks. Such precise timekeeping helps astronomers study the nature of spacetime, measure the masses of stellar objects, and improve their understanding of general relativity. In the case of this binary system, which is nearly edge-on in relation to Earth, this cosmic precision provided a pathway for astronomers to calculate the mass of the two stars. As the ticking pulsar passes behind its white dwarf companion, there is a subtle (on the order of 10 millionths of a second) delay in the arrival time of the signals. This phenomenon is known as "Shapiro Delay." In essence, gravity from the white dwarf star slightly warps the space surrounding it, in accordance with Einstein's general theory of relativity. This warping means the pulses from the rotating neutron star have to travel just a little bit farther as they wend their way around the distortions of spacetime caused by the white dwarf. Astronomers can use the amount of that delay to calculate the mass of the white dwarf. Once the mass of one of the co-orbiting bodies is known, it is a relatively straightforward process to accurately determine the mass of the other. Cromartie is the principal author on a paper accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy. The GBT observations were research related to her doctoral thesis, which proposed observing this system at two special points in their mutual orbits to accurately calculate the mass of the neutron star. "The orientation of this binary star system created a fantastic cosmic laboratory," said Scott Ransom, an astronomer at NRAO and coauthor on the paper. "Neutron stars have this tipping point where their interior densities get so extreme that the force of gravity overwhelms even the ability of neutrons to resist further collapse. Each "most massive" neutron star we find brings us closer to identifying that tipping point and helping us to understand the physics of matter at these mindboggling densities." These observation were also part of a larger observing campaign known as NANOGrav, short for the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, which is a Physics Frontiers Center funded by the NSF. Read the full article

[diversegaminglists]

Cyberpunk Games

Pure Cyberpunk:

.hack Franchise

//N.P.P.D. RUSH//- The milk of Ultraviolet

2064: Read Only Memories

AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity

Access Denied

Acid Spy

Adrenix

AdvertCity

Aerannis

Akira

Akira Psycho Ball

All Walls Must Fall - A Tech-Noir Tactics Game

Alternativa

Anachronox

Appleseed Franchise

AquaNox 1 & 2 - Having actually tried to play this, I want to point out it has some of the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard.

Astrboy Franchise

Axiom Verge

Beneath A Steel Sky - Free on GOG

Binary Domain

Bionic Heart 1 & 2

Blacklight: Retribution

BLADENET

Blade Runner

BloodNet

A Blurred Line

Bot Vice

Brigador: Up-Armored Edition

Burn Cycle

Cardinal Cross

Chäos;HEAd

Chaos Overlords

Chaser

City of Chains

Collateral

Construct: Escape the System

Cowboy Bebop

Cradle

CRIMSON METAL

Cyber City 2157: The Visual Novel

Cyberflow

CyberMage: Darklight Awakening

Cyberpunk Arena (VR)

Cyberpunk 3776

Cypher

Darknet

Defcon 5

Defragmented

Delta V

DESYNC

Deus Ex Franchise

Dex

Digimon Franchise

Disney TRON: Evolution

Distance

Download 1 & 2

DreamBreak

DreamWeb

Dystopia

Echo Tokyo

Electric Highways

Else Heart.Break()

The End

ENYO Arcade

Epanalepsis

E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy

Fallout Franchise (There’s not much of it being post-apocalyptic, but it’s there)

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Flashback Franchise

Forsaken

Frozen Synapse Franchise

Furi

Gadget: Invention, Travel & Adventure

Gemini Rue

Ghost 1.0

Ghost in the Shell Franchise

GIGA WRECKER

Gloom

GRIDD: Retroenhanced

Gunpoint

Hacker's Beat

Hacknet

Hardline

hackmud

Hard Reset

Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Hover : Revolt Of Gamers

ICEY

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (Rape warning)

Infinity Racer

Interphase

Invisible Apartment Franchise

Invisible, Inc.

Jazzpunk

Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death

JYDGE

Kanye Quest 3030 (Yes it’s that Kanye, no I don��t know either)

Katana ZERO

Kill to Collect

The Lawnmower Man

Leap of Fate

The Maker's Eden

Manhunter: New York

Manhunter 2: San Francisco

Mars: War Logs

Master Reboot

Megaman Franchise

Megazone 23: Aoi Garland

The Mercury Man

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes

Metrocide

MIDNIGHT

Murder

Neon Chrome

Neon Drive

Neon Struct

NeoTokyo

Neuromancer

NeuroVoider

Nex Machina

Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy

Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals

North

observer_

Oni

Osman

Outrage

P.A.M.E.L.A.

Policenauts - Features a breast-fondling mechanic apparently.

Primordia

Project: Snowblind

Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness

Quadrilateral Cowboy

Quanero VR

Quantum Replica

Raw Data (VR)

Remember Me

The Red Strings Club

Republique

Restricted Area

Rez

Ricochet

RONIN

ROOT

Ruiner

Sairento VR

Satellite Reign

Security Hole

Sentience: The Android's Tale

Shift Quantum

Shin Megami Tensei 1

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga Franchise

Shin Megami Tensei: NINE

Sindome

Silencer

SiN Franchise

Sinless

Slave Zero

Solid Runner

Soul Axiom

Snatcher

StarCrawlers

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

State of Mind

Steel Harbinger

Strain Tactics

Street Level

Strider Franchise

Syndicate Franchise

Syndicate Wars

System Crash

System Shock 1 & 2

Technobabylon

Techolust (VR)

The Technomancer

There Came an Echo

Tokyo 42

Transistor

Tron 2.0

UBERMOSH

The Uncertain

UnderRail

Until I Have You

Uplink

VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

Vektor Wars

Vegas Prime Retrograde

Void And Meddler

Volume

VR Invaders

Watch Dogs Franchise

Westboro

X-Kaliber 2097

Zegapain NOT

Upcoming games:

Copper Dreams

Cyberpunk 2077

Kitaru

The Last Night

Spinnortality

Synapse

Cyberpunk with magic:

Bombshell

Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy 7 (at least to begin with anyway)

The Longest Journey & Dreamfall Franchise

Magrunner: Dark Pulse - Cthulhu is there, or something like that

Megamagic: Wizards of the Neon Age

ShadowRun Franchise

Tex Murphy (magic is rare but it’s there)

Xenogears

Xenosaga

Special Mention:

Kingdom Hearts - The Tron levels.

Neochron 1 & 2 - Defunct MMOs.

Omikron: The Nomad Soul - A David Cage game, which probably constitutes as its own genre and content warning these days.

Overwatch - Most of the tech qualifies as cyberpunk, but the visual style does not.

[bi-demon-ium]

(via @mvshortcut) #hmmm good thoughts#okay this might be a reach but#ok so like in season/book 1 with the whisperer#Curtain uses code words to transmit the hidden messages#like to steal a book example the phrase 'poison apples poison worms' was said in conjunction with Jillson's lecture on government#and so simply saying that phrase evoked the memory of the lecture and all of its content#like a magic word#and that's how curtain transmitted all of the information in the seemingly nonsensical hidden messages#so I wonder if he's reusing that tactic somehow but minus the whisperer#like maybe the phrase 'north star' is a trigger word connected with some subliminal message or memory or something#and it activates the happy feeling#maybe activates a hidden set of 'be happy instructions' hidden his book/tv show somewhere?#idk why it worked on nicholas assuming he hasn't read the book#or maybe he has#but also curtain does repeat 'let us seize the power together' or whatever he said I can't remember#from his earlier attempt to brainwash nicholas in ep 2. which I think is significant#so like. conclusion: hnngrh#mbs s2#mbs s2 spoilers#ld curtain#nicholas benedict#sorry for the length I got carried away#OH and the thing about constance is interesting I just have no brain cells left for that one but. good thoughts

NO NO NO THAT MAKES SENSE IM INTO IT

also i just had the most vivid like. maybe normally it's the book thing but maybe this one is crafted particularly for him--he was expected to be there after all--and connected to some sort of shared memory like. god imagine we get a flashback to the twins as little kids just like. stargazing together. even more painful if they joke about "the dance of the celestial orb" or some shit. but like one of them points out the north star (oh god consider one of those cheesy but painful "we always look at the same moon" / "it can guide you home, always" shit oh god oh fuck) so like it's linked to a good memory oh and also oh GOD OH GOD FUCK

FUCK IVE CONNECTED THE DOTS

THE NORTH STAR ITS ONE OF THE. ITS ONE OF THE BINARY SYSTEMS. ITS TWIN STARS HELP IM CRYING OH GOD OH FUCK

as i said in my liveblog i don't know how or why but i feel like specifically curtain saying "north star" is going to be important ("i simply choose to open the valve deep inside of me and let my true happiness, the happiness safe from all intrusions, that be my north star") namely because:

if i remember correctly, that's about when mr benedict got whammied

it just sounds significant and specific enough it could be meaningful

so far in the theme and just a few times like in constance's whole thing with her "parents" (still not convinced that isn't either true or like, has a grain of truth in it or some shit--or possibly--actually let that be another post hang on) we've had like. the arctic and the north and all that mentioned a lot? so this feels. also significant. and relevant.

[moondonky]

ISON

A rabbit hole different from the rest , have we forgotten about planet x.. ouuu weee was that a juicy one, thats one that u just hope isn't real, just infrared.. strap in, everything else turned out to be true.. a mysterious cycle with the Bible only ever telling you to watch for the signs and flee to the mountains,, as earth turns upside down and is shaken, pangs of birth, everything else is just how to be a decent person, and our ancestors did everything they could to warn us about it, common core does not teach what is not understood,, and its foundation was set in stone,, back when people were kinda retarded in all there brilliance, its not an error in calculation, but a matter of perception, everything changes the closer u try to look at it...

Down a rabbit hole.. prepare yourself, like me just hope its all bullshit... planet x was a theory based off an unknown effect of gravitys n shit.. it is the reason pluto is no longer a planet, but also why the calculation only adds up to a missing planet or sumthibg with a weird orbit, hence the discovery of nemesis.. which many say is bullshit.. to hide the effects of an entire solar system, everything changed the moment we could see space in infrared, birth of rogue planets, and red dwarf star binary twins locked in parahelion, like the particals in an atom,, but ours was different.. rumor has it ours orbits a giant molten ball of iron so big our binary twin circles it, u could see it in pictures, a winged planet, and it got bigger and bigger,, and then images were censored.. everything became hush hush and quiet, and the world kinda got crazy after that.. talking dark matter and trying to get to space n shit like real quick,, understanding quickly id be smarter to know how to live on a planet like mars.. to me all the division the show the confusion, are just distractions, its like entrainment for a reason, even the animals know sum shits about to happen,, and it has nothing to do with wars and economics and bullshit,, just like birds n whales and mammals u got this internal compass tuned to eathes energy and magnetics, a frequency u don't know how to react to any more.. animals species be moving north.. might tell u sumthing

my personal theory is when it gets close everything shifts, earths wobble shifts, earths climate shifts, earths magnetics shift, tectonics shift, currents shift, our north star shifts. in every cycle of our parahelion dance with our binary twin.. lots of asteroids n comets n shit,, just a cosmic battle of the stars n shit.. that is what I watch for.. and if it happens,, like the bible says,, u prolly deserve it, and for those who listen,, flee to the mountains

[astrogeoguy]

The Moon Covers Aldebaran while Morning Mercury Meets Mars, plus Lyra for September Stargazing!

(Above: The Ring Nebula aka Messier 57 is a planetary nebula - the corpse of a sun-like star. The tiny star in the centre is the cooling naked core of the former star, now radiating the sphere of gas, and causing it to glow.)

Stargazing News for this week (from September 10th, 2017) by Chris Vaughan. (Feel free to pass this along to friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics.) I post these with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! All times mentioned are in Eastern Standard Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested in joining me in a guided field trip to the York University Observatory, visit www.astrogeo.ca.  

Public Events

At 7:30 pm on Wednesday, September 13, the RASC Toronto Centre will hold their free monthly Recreational Astronomy Night Meeting at the Ontario Science Centre, and the public are welcome. Talks include the Sky This Month, several reports about trips to see the recent solar eclipse (with pictures and videos), and setting up your own observatory. Check here for details. Parking is free. 

Other events this week include The Science Behind Earth-like Planets presented by U of T’s Dr. Mike Reid (he’s excellent) at City Hall Library on Thursday (details here), Nerd Nite Toronto: Spaced and Confused: A Hypnotic Journey, which mixes suds and science at the Transac Club on Thursday (details here), and U of T Planetarium: Voyager’s Odyssey: A Small Probe’s Adventures into Interstellar Space on Friday (details here). 

(Above: Every year in early evening in mid-September, the same stars surround the zenith, which is defined as the point on the sky directly overhead.)

September Stargazing Round-up - Lyra

With the Moon out of the evening sky for the next few weeks and darkness falling a bit earlier, it’s a good time to tour the night sky. 

Once it’s dark, tilt your head back and look waaay up. Or set out a blanket, gravity chair, or chaise. Point your finger directly overhead. That’s the zenith - the point of the sky directly above you. During the night, various stars and constellations will pass through that patch of sky as the Earth’s rotation carries them from east to west. While objects occupy that position, they will always appear at their best. That’s because you are looking through the least amount of intervening air. 

(Above: A close-up of the zenith area (green cross) at 9 pm in mid-September. Clockwise from bottom, the surrounding constellations are Lyra, Cygnus, Draco, and Hercules. The deep sky objects peppering the Milky Way are indicated with symbols and labels.)

In early evening in mid-September every year, the constellations of Lyra (the Harp), Cygnus (the Swan), Hercules, and Draco (the Dragon) occupy that spot. I’ll post a sky chart here. Over the next few weeks, we’ll tour them, pointing out some objects you can look at with binoculars and small telescopes. Up first is Lyra. In Greek mythology, Lyra is the musical instrument created from a turtle shell by Hermes and later used by Orpheus in his ill-fated attempt to rescue his lost love Eurydice from the underworld. We Canadian astronomers call Lyra the “Tim Hortons Constellation” because it contains both a doughnut and a double-double (coffee)! 

Facing south and looking just to the lower right of the zenith, you’ll easily spot the very bright star Vega, or Alpha Lyrae – the brightest star in the constellation. Vega, the fifth brightest star in the entire night sky, partly because it is only about 25 light years away, and partly because it is a very hot luminous star. The name Vega arises from the Arabic "Al Nasr al Waqi", or the "swooping eagle". Traditionally, the Lyre was pictured as being grasped in the talons of an eagle. 

Vega is heading towards the Sun and will continually brighten over time, becoming the brightest star in the night sky a few hundred thousand years from now. Meanwhile, the wobble of the Earth’s axis will also cause Vega to become the North Pole Star around 14,500 AD, as it was around 12,000 BC. This star is a star! 

Vega also is the brightest, highest, and most westerly of the three beautiful blue-white stars of the Summer Triangle. Moving clockwise, Altair is about three fist widths below and to the left of Vega. Deneb, slightly dimmer than the other two, completes the large triangle at the upper left. The separation between Deneb and Vega is shorter, only 24° or 2.5 fist widths. 

Chinese culture celebrates a love story in which Cowherd Niú Láng (牛郎) is the star Altair. He and his two children, (β and γ Aquilae, the stars that flank Altair) are separated from their mother Zhī Nǚ (織女) the "Weaving Girl" (Vega) who is on the far side of the river, which is represented by the Milky Way. Each year, on the seventh day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, magpies make a bridge so that the family can be together again for a single night.

(Above: A detailed star map of the constellation Lyra, including the two Messier objects M57 and M56)

Look for a medium-dim star about a finger’s width to the left of Vega. A similarly dim star sits about a finger’s width below it. The three stars form a neat little triangle with Vega at the right. Binoculars or a small telescope will reveal that the triangle’s star to the left of Vega, designated Epsilon Lyrae, is actually a close pair of stars. A really good telescope will reveal that each of the pair of stars is itself a very close together pair! This quadruple star system, or “double-double”, is about 162 light-years from Earth. Even more interesting, each little pair is circling one another, and the two pairs may also be orbiting - in a neat little square dance that takes thousands of years to complete! 

The other corner of our little triangle is the star Zeta Lyrae, and it, too can be split into a double star with binoculars. Both are white and one is slightly brighter than its partner. These stars are about 152 light-years away, and they themselves have partners that are too close to split visually. 

Zeta is also the top right star of a narrow upright parallelogram about two fingers wide and four fingers tall that forms the rest of the constellation. Moving clockwise, we find Sheliak, Sulafat, and Delta Lyrae. Sheliak, meaning “Harp”, is the brightest of a tight little grouping of stars visible in a telescope. Sheliak itself has a close-in dim partner that orbits the main star so that, every 13 days, the brighter star is blocked and the total brightness drops by a noticeable amount. This is called an Eclipsing Binary system. 

Next, at the bottom of the parallelogram, sits Sulafat, meaning “Turtle”, and named for the shell forming the body of the Lyre. Sulafat is a hot blue giant star 620 light-years away. Similar in colour to Vega, Sulafat is much larger - an old star on its way to becoming an orange giant many years from now. 

Finally, at the upper left of the parallelogram is Delta Lyrae. Sharp eyes and binoculars will easily reveal that this is yet another pair of stars – one blue (upper) and one red (lower). The two are not related - the blue star is several hundred light-years farther away than the red one. They just happen to appear close together along the same line of sight. 

So, where’s the doughnut? Train your telescope midway between Sheliak and Sulafat, and look for the little, dim, grey smoke ring known as the Ring Nebula (also known as Messier 57). This little bubble of gas in space is the remnant of a dead star that was very much like our Sun. These common objects are called planetary nebulae because they show a little round disk, like a planet. Finally, using binoculars or a telescope, extend to the lower left the line that joins Sheliak to Sulafat. At about twice their separation (from Sulafat) is a Globular Star Cluster called Messier 56. It will appear as a dim fuzzy patch – a Timbit! 

Let me know how your exploration of Lyra goes. There are lots of double stars in the constellation. 

The Moon and Planets

The Moon reaches its Last Quarter phase in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Last quarter moons rise about midnight and persist into the daytime morning sky, leaving the evenings darker for stargazing. The 90° angle made between the Sun, Earth, and Moon at last quarter cause the moon to be half illuminated, lit on the eastern (left-hand) side. The terms gibbous and crescent are used to describe objects that are more than half illuminated, or less than half. By the way, only bodies that venture between us and the Sun can ever appear as crescents when viewed from the surface of the Earth. Those are the Moon, Venus, and Mercury (and some asteroids). 

The day before last quarter, from midnight to dawn on Tuesday, September 12, the waning gibbous moon will pass through the stars marking the triangular face of Taurus (the Bull). As dawn approaches, the moon moves towards Taurus’ brightest star Aldebaran. You can try using a backyard telescope to see the Moon pass in front of (or occult) the star. In the Great Lakes region, the Moon covers Aldebaran around 8:48 am EDT and moves off it about 10 am (times varies by location). Observers in western North America and Hawaii will see the event in a dark sky. 

(Above: Between about 8:45 and 10 am Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday morning, the moon will pass in front of the bright star Aldebaran. A telescope might let you see the event, which happens in a dark sky for observers in the Pacific Ocean region.)

For the rest of the week, the Moon wanes and rises later, and passing though the legs of Gemini (the Twins) and then appearing as a thin crescent above Venus in the eastern pre-dawn sky on Sunday morning. 

This week, Mercury is giving us its best appearance of the year for mid-northern skywatchers all over the world, and it’s easily seen with plain old eyeballs. Look for it very low in the eastern sky from the time it rises, about 5:30 am local time, until about 6:30 am. On Tuesday morning, the planet will reach its widest angle west of the sun, and peak visibility. If you want to try using a telescope, Mercury will exhibit a waxing half-illuminated phase. But be sure to point the telescope away from the eastern horizon well before the Sun comes up. 

On Monday morning, Mercury will sit only a finger width below the bright star Regulus and about three finger widths to the upper right of much dimmer Mars. As the week progresses, Mercury will drop away from the star and approach Mars, passing so close that on Saturday and Sunday morning both planets should appear together in a telescope eyepiece (but Saturday is best). While Mercury will pass in a week or two, Mars will become easier and easier to see after it rises about 5:30 am local time. 

(Above: Mercury reaches peak visibility on Tuesday morning when it swings widest of the Sun. Mars, Regulus, and Venus are nearby.)

And don’t forget to check out extremely bright Venus. Recently showing a gibbous phase, It’s much higher than Mercury because it rises in the eastern sky after 4 am local time. This week, the planet continues to descend slowly sunward towards Leo (the Lion).

Jupiter is the bright white object low in the southwestern evening sky after sunset. It sets before 9 pm local time this week. Saturn is the medium-bright, yellowish object partway up the southern sky as the evening darkens. It sets in the west just before midnight local time. Once it’s dark, you can see the fist-sized Teapot-shaped group of stars to the left of Saturn and the distinctive Scorpius (the Scorpion), with its tail curving eastwards low above the horizon, to the right of the ringed planet. 

(Above: The sky at 8:30 pm local time. Jupiter, at lower right sets early, while Saturn at centre persists until midnight.) 

Blue-green Uranus, situated along the eastern (left-hand) string of stars that form Pisces (the Fishes), rises about 9 pm local time and is observable for the rest of the night in binoculars under a dark sky (but not this week!). There’s a medium-bright star about a finger’s width below Uranus. 

Tiny blue Neptune is approximately opposite the Sun in the sky, putting it near its closest and brightest for this year. Also observable all night, it is located about two finger widths to the lower left of the medium-bright star Hydor in Aquarius (the Water-Bearer). It is too faint to be seen with the unaided eye.

Keep looking up to enjoy the sky! I love getting questions so, if you have any, send me a note.