Hello! You’ll noticed that I skipped Astronomy Pictures of the Week on Wednesday. That… was on purpose.
Today was Cassini’s last day alive. This morning, Cassini plunged into Saturn, sending back some amazing data, but, in the process, ending its life.
Cassini was launched on October 15th, 1997. For two decades, Cassini revealed the wonders of the greatest planet and planetary system in our solar system to us. We learned so much.
But, now, it’s over…
Guess what?
It’s a short one this time… only 49 seconds. It’s also a true guitar solo, all acoustic.
It’s Randy Rhoads, playing a solo of his called Dee. It’s really very beautiful. I wish it was longer, to be honest, but I love it.
Cassini gazes across the icy rings of Saturn toward the icy moon Tethys, whose night side is illuminated by Saturnshine, or sunlight reflected by the planet.
Tethys was on the far side of Saturn with respect to Cassini here; an observer looking upward from the moon’s surface toward Cassini would see Saturn’s illuminated disk filling the sky.
Tethys was brightened by a factor of two in this image to increase its visibility. A sliver of the moon’s sunlit northern hemisphere is seen at top. A bright wedge of Saturn’s sunlit side is seen at lower left.
Okay… I should probably qualify that title a bit… thanks to my anxiety, I haven’t actually participated in many protests (though I’m working up the courage to actually start participating in more… and I have participated in dialogues and such). Plus, despite realizing that I’m not a pacifist, I’m actually a coward who’s usual reaction to face-to-face conflict is to curl up into the fetal position and cry for Mommy. So… you know…
However, I do support Antifa and consider myself Antifa, and I’m friends and comrades with Antifa. Despite the qualifications above, I am part of it… or at least I try to be…
So… that title? It’s not clickbait.
The DHS has officially classified Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
Another long one from the great Pink Floyd… with David Gilmour on lead guitar, obviously…
We’re going to their album Animals, and the song Dogs. I really love this one, and of course, as usual for David Gilmour, the solos are perfect.
Let’s get to the song…
The first guitar solo starts at 1:50 and ends at 2:25. The second solo, a guitar duet, starts at 3:40 and ends at 4:47. Then the third solo starts at 5:32 and ends at 6:46. The fourth solos starts at 13:25 and ends at 14:07, which is where a repeat of the second guitar solo (the duet) begins, which ends at 15:18.
IMO, it’s an incredible song. Sure, it’s long, but that’s Pink Floyd… and, for me, at least, they do an amazing job of keeping my attention through the entirety of their longer songs, so…
Back to Cassini’s Grand Finale… today we’re highlighting Titan…
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft looks toward the night side of Saturn’s moon Titan in a view that highlights the extended, hazy nature of the moon’s atmosphere. During its long mission at Saturn, Cassini has frequently observed Titan at viewing angles like this, where the atmosphere is backlit by the Sun, in order to make visible the structure of the hazes.
Titan’s high-altitude haze layer appears blue here, whereas the main atmospheric haze is orange. The difference in color could be due to particle sizes in the haze. The blue haze likely consists of smaller particles than the orange haze.
Late! I’m so sorry…
Jimmy Page is here on the Julie Felix show, playing White Summer/Black Mountain Side on acoustic guitar. It’s probably my favorite version of the instrumental.
Sadly, the video quality is… poor… but then this is recovered raw footage. It aired on April 26, 1970.
If you listen closely, from 2:57 to 3:21, it sounds like he’s riffing on “Friends” just a tiny bit (different key and arrangement, obviously, but still).
Taking a detour from Cassini’s Grand Finale to celebrate the solar eclipse we had in the US just this past Monday. I’m sad to say that, from my vantage point (Long Island, New York), it was pretty underwhelming. I wish I’d had the money and time to travel to somewhere along the path of totality and really observe it. Hopefully I’ll be able to for the next one. I’m quite positive that this isn’t my first, but it could just be that I watched clips of one when I was younger. Did the last total solar eclipse in the US happen sometime within the last 30 years?
Hm…
Anyways…
The eclipse has been called the “Great American Eclipse” which like… they know that Canada and South America have had total solar eclipses, too… right? I mean… the United States isn’t the only country in America you know… But anyways…
The event’s shadow began to cover land on the Oregon coast as a partial eclipse at 4:06 p.m. UTC (9:06 a.m. PDT), and its land coverage ended as a partial eclipse along the South Carolina coast at about 6:44 p.m. UTC (2:44 p.m. EDT). Visibility as a partial eclipse in Honolulu, Hawaii began with sunrise at 4:20 p.m. UTC (6:20 a.m. HST) and ended by 5:25 p.m. UTC (7:25 a.m. HST).
Okay so…
This one comes courtesy of sonofrojblake, in a comment on last week’s GGS post.
Like last week’s, it’s another instrumental that stands as a true guitar solo. There is some background music, but not much. The whole thing is just an really amazing guitar solo.
It’s 10 minutes and 23 seconds. And it fades out at the end. And it’s really good.
I haven’t posted about Nazi invasion and terrorist attack in Charlottesville because I’m feeling… well…
You can easily see my thoughts and things on Facebook, where I let loose a tad with the re-posts…
But anyways…
I don’t really have much to say, to be honest. I’m grappling with my feelings, because, at the moment, I have to deal with the fact that I genuinely feel fine seeing these Nazis killed… and I’m not okay with that. That does not make me comfortable or happy. It seems like a betrayal of my ethics, considering I’m against the death penalty.
But these are also Nazis. I don’t think there’s another group in modern history that can be considered as evil as Nazis. And now they’re here, in the United States, in 2017, marching in our streets and killing citizens.