Stellar Spire in the Eagle Nebula

Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, and The
Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

I enjoy viewing astrophotography.  Images from space have a special beauty, and I find that contemplating the scope of the cosmos helps to put my own small problems in perspective.

The image I'm posting today shows a spire or pillar in the Eagle Nebula, located in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy.  I enjoy the NASA news release accompanying this image as much as the image itself:

"Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 57 trillion miles high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star.

Stars in the Eagle Nebula are born in clouds of cold hydrogen gas that reside in chaotic neighborhoods, where energy from young stars sculpts fantasy-like landscapes in the gas. The tower may be a giant incubator for those newborn stars. A torrent of ultraviolet light from a band of massive, hot, young stars [off the top of the image] is eroding the pillar.

The starlight also is responsible for illuminating the tower's rough surface. Ghostly streamers of gas can be seen boiling off this surface, creating the haze around the structure and highlighting its three-dimensional shape. The column is silhouetted against the background glow of more distant gas.

The edge of the dark hydrogen cloud at the top of the tower is resisting erosion, in a manner similar to that of brush among a field of prairie grass that is being swept up by fire. The fire quickly burns the grass but slows down when it encounters the dense brush. In this celestial case, thick clouds of hydrogen gas and dust have survived longer than their surroundings in the face of a blast of ultraviolet light from the hot, young stars.

Inside the gaseous tower, stars may be forming. Some of those stars may have been created by dense gas collapsing under gravity. Other stars may be forming due to pressure from gas that has been heated by the neighboring hot stars.

The first wave of stars may have started forming before the massive star cluster began venting its scorching light. The star birth may have begun when denser regions of cold gas within the tower started collapsing under their own weight to make stars.

The bumps and fingers of material in the center of the tower are examples of these stellar birthing areas. These regions may look small but they are roughly the size of our solar system. The fledgling stars continued to grow as they fed off the surrounding gas cloud. They abruptly stopped growing when light from the star cluster uncovered their gaseous cradles, separating them from their gas supply.

Ironically, the young cluster's intense starlight may be inducing star formation in some regions of the tower. Examples can be seen in the large, glowing clumps and finger-shaped protrusions at the top of the structure. The stars may be heating the gas at the top of the tower and creating a shock front, as seen by the bright rim of material tracing the edge of the nebula at top, left. As the heated gas expands, it acts like a battering ram, pushing against the darker cold gas. The intense pressure compresses the gas, making it easier for stars to form. This scenario may continue as the shock front moves slowly down the tower.

The dominant colors in the image were produced by gas energized by the star cluster's powerful ultraviolet light. The blue color at the top is from glowing oxygen. The red color in the lower region is from glowing hydrogen. The Eagle Nebula image was taken in November 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope."

Savvy Google Searching -- and Beyond

In much of life, what you find depends not only on where you search but also on how you search.  This is certainly true when using Google to search the Internet.  Choosing your keywords and hitting the search button is the first step to finding the information you seek.  If it's also your last step, you may be overlooking features that can greatly improve your search experience.  Next time you do a search, check out the left-hand panel that appears with the search results.  Finding information that's outdated?  Try clicking on "Past year" or "Past month" or whatever time frame fits your search best.  Not finding quite what you wanted?  Try checking out "Related searches."  When planning a vacation, try changing your location to the city you plan to visit before you start searching for restaurants, hotels, events, etc.  I'm not going to give detailed instructions and screen shots.  The left-panel features of Google search are pretty intuitive, so it will be quicker and easier for you to just try them out.

Those who'd like to become Google power searchers, might want to check out Google's search features and then work through some master lessons on search.  If you've got a specific question about Google search, the help pages can be helpful.  And finally, if you're a webmaster, you'll want to keep track of how the pages in your site are ranked by Google.  Page Rank Checker is a convenient way to do that.

Beyond Google Search

There's useful information on the Word Wide Web that can't be found using conventional search engines.  At MakeUseOf, Saikat Basu reviews some alternative methods in 10 Search Engines to Explore the Invisible Web.  Most of the resources described are not what I'd consider search engines, but they are definitely worth knowing about.

Pseudonymous Blogging

In my last post, I mentioned pseudonymous blogging.  Boing Boing! has an article by Maggie Koerth-Baker on Pseudonyms and Science.  It provides a thoughtful and concise explanation of why pseudonyms make sense for certain kinds of blogging.  The article also provides links to further discussions of pseudonyms on the Internet.

Writing under a pseudonym was not invented with the Internet.  The custom of "pen names" is well-established.  I am entirely comfortable with Lewis Carroll, Andre Norton, George Eliot, and Mark Twain.  What I fail to understand is why pseudonymous blogging on the Internet is considered by some to be inappropriate.  As far as I know, no one is being forced to read pseudonymous blogs, which is perhaps more than can be said of Tom Sawyer.

Two Profiles, Five Photos, One Google

Last week I created a Blogger account so I could explore the interaction between Google+ and Google's blog platform.  There is a profile associated with my Blogger account, and new blogs I create show a link to this profile by default.  My Blogger profile is separate from my Google+ profile, and I think that is a good thing.  I like that my Blogger profile can use a photo that's been customized to fit in with the color scheme of my blogs.  I also favor making pseudonymous blogging available and easy.  However, it would be nice to have a box in the Blogger profile editor that says "use my Google+ profile" -- as an option, not a requirement.

Before I decided to get fancy with colors, I figured I'd save some server space by using in Blogger profile the photo I'd already uploaded for my Google+ profile.  Turns out that's not possible.  While Blogger allowed me to specify a profile photo by URL, Blogger doesn't simply use that same photo.  I know this because I ended up with four more copies of the photo in my Picasa Web Albums!

If I want my photo to display properly in my Blogger profile, I probably need to leave the copies Blogger has created and placed in an album called Blogger Pictures.  Having this separate album makes sense, as it keeps me from accidentally deleting my Blogger photo while pruning Picasa Web Albums -- though I'm not sure why four copies of my photo are necessary.

So far, as to interaction with Google+, I'm not seeing much difference between Blogger and any other blogging platform.  That may change over time.

Jupiter Portrait from NASA

NASA provides wonderful images.  This is a true color portrait of Jupiter, composed from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft on December 29, 2000, during its closest approach to the planet.

According to the NASA website:  "Everything visible on the planet is a cloud. The parallel reddish-brown and white bands, the white ovals, and the large Great Red Spot persist over many years despite the intense turbulence visible in the atmosphere. The most energetic features are the small, bright clouds to the left of the Great Red Spot and in similar locations in the northern half of the planet. These clouds grow and disappear over a few days and generate lightning. Streaks form as clouds are sheared apart by Jupiter's intense jet streams that run parallel to the colored bands. The prominent dark band in the northern half of the planet is the location of Jupiter's fastest jet stream, with eastward winds of 480 kilometers (300 miles) per hour."  "Unlike Earth, where only water condenses to form clouds, Jupiter's clouds are made of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and water."

You can see a scalable version of this Jupiter Portrait on the NASA Images website, where you will find many other extraordinary photographs and visualizations.  For more information on the Cassini mission and its images, visit JPL's Cassini pages and the Cassini Imaging website.


Image Credit:  NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute                      

Tis Brillig

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that’s all."

---

Some say "brillig" refers to four o'clock in the afternoon, or the time you begin broiling things for dinner.  I say it can mean whatever you choose it to mean. So in this blog, "brillig" can mean a number of different things. In making "brillig" mean so many different things, however, I am not trying to be master. Rather, I'm recognizing that "brillig" is a made-up word from a nonsense poem, and, as such, lies outside the shared conventions that govern our ordinary use of language. (There's glory for you!)

Thus brillig can mean the time of day when I write for this blog. That could be in the late afternoon, around four o'clock, or it could be later in the evening — which is when when broiling things for dinner tends to happen in my household. I find it best to write, though, when the time is available and the inspiration strikes. When that happens, tis brillig.

Brillig can mean the state of mind I experience when I come to understand something better through writing about it. I've found that explaining something to other people leads me to deeper learning than just reading or taking personal notes. So when I understand something well enough to write a short, coherent article, tis brillig.

And so I will continue to write, whether I have many readers, few readers or none at all. I write for an audience in order to write for myself. While writing to learn, though, I also seek to add something new — whether it be information, humor, juxtaposition, stimulation, explanation, interpretation, or just my personal opinion (though I try not to put too much stock in that). When I can add something usefully new, tis brillig.

Brillig also can mean a time or a state of mind for you, the reader, when you visit this site. Perhaps a search engine has brought you here quite by accident. Perhaps you followed a link on a social site because you have a little time on your hands while broiling something for dinner. Perhaps you were actually seeking information on a subject I've written about. However you got here, if you find information of use to you, understand better, see differently, make a new connection, or find something that makes you smile — tis brillig!