Saturday reflections

The Pool in Central Park this afternoon.

Many of the leaves have faded or fallen but the trees are still beautiful. I've been enjoying being lazy and mostly unproductive this holiday weekend, but I saw that a new (to me) duck had been hanging out in the Pool and I decided that trying to see it was worth the enormous effort of getting dressed and leaving the apartment. And this view was certainly worth it.

Astronomy Tuesday

This image is from Euclid, the new ESA space telescope launched in July. Its mission is to create a map of the large-scale structure of the universe, and explore the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

There are more than a thousand galaxies in the Perseus cluster pictured here, and more than 100,000 galaxies visible in the background.

Image Credit and License: ESA, Euclid, Euclid Consortium, NASA; Processing: Jean-Charles Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay) and Giovanni Anselmi; Text: Jean-Charles Cuillandre

Saturday reflections

November skies reflected in the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.

Tis the season

Allergy season, anyway. 

I haven't seen much of the fall colors this year. I did manage to walk home through Central Park after class yesterday, although an unpleasantly hot classroom had both me and my students in a torpor by late afternoon, but we're past peak color now.

I took this from my living room window last year. Although that particular view can't help but remind me of the awful locked-down days in 2020 and 2021, when it was basically all I saw for weeks at a time, I still love those colors.

Astronomy Tuesday

I remember reading a popular science book some years back that summarized the Second Law of Thermodynamics with something to the effect of, “In other words, in this world, things always get messier.”

There are always far more disorderly than orderly outcomes to any given situation. I'm still trying and mostly failing to reorder everything that went to entropy hell when I got hurt several weeks ago, so this Hubble image of the Arp 87 system seems appropriate. The two dueling galaxies will eventually merge together a few billion years from now; in the meantime the messy interaction reminds me of a cotton candy machine, with one galaxy pulling strands of gas from the other.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: Harshwardhan Pathak

Reflections

I have been completely wiped out for the past several days. It feels like the dregs of Covid, but I'm negative, and I'm guessing that I'm just having a much worse than usual allergy season.

So here are some belated reflections, from the beautiful exhibit of Tiffany lamps at the New York Historical Society.

Saturday reflections

That sky made a perfect backdrop for these reflections on Broadway.

I took my class on a field trip to the New York Historical Society today, and after eight straight rainy Saturdays, it was sunny and unseasonably warm today and we were able to have our lunch pizza in Central Park.

It was a lovely day, and I have been in my pajamas since approximately thirty seconds after I got home.

Urban poetry

I am better, but still struggling to catch up on all the daily chores that got put on hold while I was out of action. So I haven't posted much.

Here are two pictures from earlier this month, of Gansevoort Peninsula. It's the latest of the old piers on the Hudson to be repurposed for recreation, but instead of a park, they built a beach. You can't swim, but there's sand, and rocks for the river water to lap against with appropriately beachy sounds.

It's a little surreal, which I think these photos capture. Especially because although it was unseasonably warm the day I was there, it was still October!

Orthopedic update

I know my ribs are slowly healing because now when I attempt to get out of bed in the morning I whimper instead of yelp.

But it's no coincidence that my favorite earworm of the past week and a half is this song.

Astronomy Tuesday

This spooky image is much closer to home than the ones I usually post, but not something I've ever seen before.

Red sprite lightning occurs in the upper atmosphere at a range of 50 to 90 km, far higher than the storm clouds that create the more garden variety lightning that accompanies thunderstorms. Sprites aren't actually lightning at all, but a kind of atmospheric plasma.

This image, from France, was captured as a single frame from a video. In the next frame, the sprites had already disappeared.

Image Credit and Copyright: Nicolas Escurat

Saturday reflections

Rows of converging reflections in Midtown Manhattan.

I managed to teach today despite my banged-up rib cage, but I have been basically horizontal ever since I got home, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Astronomy Tuesday

This is allegedly MyCn 18, the Engraved Hourglass Planetary Nebula, but I'm not completely convinced that it isn't a practical joke or something generated by AI. The giant blue eye in the middle of the image is—unnerving, to put it mildly. But if I were going to invent a nebula, I wouldn't use both pink and orange.

Image Credit and Copyright: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Processing and Copyright: Harshwardhan Pathak