BAN #357: Sci fi extravaganza, Flying murder machine

[The planetary nebula M 2-9, winds from a dying star. Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Legacy Archive / Judy Schmidt]

Subscribers are science fact, not fiction

GIVEAWAY!

Free stuff! Yay!

Hey, the folks at the scifi app The Companion have extended the free three-month membership offer I made in last week’s newsletter. However it’s only for 48 hours, so if you want to get three free months of terrific in-depth interviews, articles, and more, then click this:

https://bit.ly/Phil3Month

If you’re a Stargate fan, the interview series creator Brad Wright did with Rodney Mckay actor (and my friend) David Hewlett is pretty entertaining. David is a scifi and tech nerd, and charmingly silly. It’s a good podcast episode.

Anyway, get it while you can three months for free!

Blog Jam

What I’ve recently written on the blog, ICYMI

[The extremely flat galaxy IC 335. From Friday’s article. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA]

Monday 6 September, 2021: So, a star may have eaten a black hole and exploded

Tuesday 7 September, 2021: Astronomical speed trap catches its 1000th asteroid

Wednesday 8 September, 2021: Want to slow aging? Gently fuse hydrogen all over your surface

Thursday 9 September, 2021: Kleopatra may be a dumbbell-shaped metallic rubble pile

Friday 10 September, 2021: The Earth may not be flat but this galaxy sure is

I recommend

Something I think you’ll like

If you’re a Scifi Fan Of A Certain Age then you remember Space:1999. I loved this show when I was a kid, and still hold a great deal of fondness for it. I’ve written about it many times here in the newsletter.

Today’s date is September 13, and that means it’s Breakaway Day, 22 years since a mysterious explosion blew the Moon out of Earth orbit and we lost all 311 crew on Moonbase Alpha.

To celebrate this ignominious date, my friend Jamie Anderson — Gerry Anderson’s son — has opened pre-orders for the “Moonbase Alpha Operations Technical Manual”, a stunningly detailed (272 pages!) in-world manual for newcomers to the moonbase on how everything works there.

[LOOK AT THIS! The special edition comes in one of those 1970s/1999 style white flight cases! Credit: Anderson Entertainment]

This looks AMAZING, and I am pleased to announce I am a contributor. The manual has updates from Alphans on conditions since Breakaway, and as it happens Deputy Senior Scientist Dr. Philip Plait has some comments on what’s he’s seen and experienced since then. Maybe even some scientific explanations for things that seemed unexplainable, including the Mysterious Unknown Force behind it all.

I had an absolute blast (haha! Ha!) thinking about how to explain some of the weirder stuff from the show, and writing a log entry in first person was one of the more enjoyable things I’ve done during these past few otherwise execrable months. 

You can see more about the manual here:

If you’re a fan of the show, you want this. Pre-order a copy!

Red in Tooth and Claw

I live in rural Colorado, and we get nature here

I love seeing all the birds we get here in the plains just east of the Colorado Rocky Mountain foothills. The variety of raptors is amazing; I’ve seen ospreys, bald eagles, golden eagles, harriers, kestrels, and of course hawks.

Hawks are everywhere in the US so it’s easy to take them for granted. Normally they stay far enough away that getting shots of them sitting is tough, but we have a series of power poles running past the house and a lot of different birds love to sit on them. One of them we call the “eagle pole” because baldies love it.

The next pole in the line gets other birds (I’m not sure why bald eagles don’t sit on it, but they don’t). I saw an osprey on it not long ago. But hawks like it too, and this one seemed to enjoy the view:

[A red-tailed hawk on a power pole. Credit Phil Plait]

I’m pretty sure that’s a red-tailed hawk (I still suck at IDing birds) looking for breakfast. It was just far enough away that my telephoto was struggling, but some details are easy. I was admiring it through the lens for a moment, and then had a bit of a worldview shift: I saw that wickedly curved beak and terrifying talons, and went from “what a gorgeous bird” to “HOLY CRAP THAT’S A FLYING MURDER MACHINE” in a flat second.

It’s pretty common for us to find piles of feathers or bones in random spots in our yard, and it’s a pretty good reminder that nature is gonna nature.

Et alia

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