Shoshin-Zazen

Sigh… dear universe….the romance of the enigma evokes feelings best left visceral.

Hubble Paranomic View of Orion Nebula Reveals Thousands of Stars.

Thro’ worlds unnumbered tho’ the God be Known,
‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system ruins
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied Being peoples ev’ry star,
May tell why Heav’n has made us as we are.

-Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733)

As Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-d?s shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.

- J R R Tolkein The Lord of the Rings (The Return of the King)

Imagine! In the great void of deep space, lies an object so massive and obtrusive, that it looks like an eye (aprrox.) 450 light years away. And since man has always a thing or two for metaphors, you can name it Eye of the Tiger, Sauron’s Eye, Cat’s Eye, Maria’s Eye, etc.

Credit: C. R. O’Dell, (Vanderbilt) et al. ESA, NASA

Its true name is the Helix Nebula, discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding before 1824. Or if you have a penchant for kinky alphanumeric, NGC 7293 is the code you are looking for. This stellar object which not really helixical in shape, is the nearest planetary nebula to Earth. It still leave scientists with lots of unanswered questions.

Nevertheless, about 12,000 thousands of years ago, a sun-like star got a visit from the immortal and ubiquitious grim-reaper. Hence, a planetary nebula - a glowing gaseous envelop, disk expelled from a dying star - forms. That is not all. If you look closer at the picture, a striking feature that is hugely responsible for the ‘eye’ resemblence is an inner, and outer disk. According to scientists, the inner disk, formed about 6,600 years ago, is expanding faster than the outer one. (More…)

This planetary nebula is not only beautifully intricate, its birth from the ashes of the sun-like star to a planetary nebula provides us with possible senarios of how our own ’solar’ planetary nebula will look like. Of course, that is like about 5 million years later. Anybody got any insurance?

Maybe some alieniod will catch our planetary nebula in their telescopes. I hope its nice.

Have you caught yourself gazing with a child-like wonder when looking at clouds??If you haven’t, then here’s something that should be of interest to you.

Credit & Copyright: Dan Bush (Missouri Skies)

Such a cloud is called a Roll Cloud. Such a ominous looking cloud certainly doesn’t argur well - weather wise. Some may even think that it looks like a tornado rotated 90 degrees horizontal. Well, maybe on planet Jupiter. However, roll clouds are rather benign compared to the evil-twisted tornado. In fact, they literallly have no connections to any thunderclouds, this means that they are completely detached from the thunderstorm base or other cloud features. Compare this to the Shelf Cloud.

If you are curious as how clouds form, there’s always wiki.

And to those who are just starting to being acquainted with those ‘fluffy giant mashmallows’ in the sky, welcome back to Earth! =)