Rush of Sun

Terrain X, is a double exposure of ground and sky both above and below me. The distance of nature is collapsed, condensed. A double exposure is a glitch, caught between two relative spaces, unable to focus, position oneself. The space in between is myself, my body. I perceived at the time myself as being surrounded. My whole body is slowed, hesitation, I want to stare into the sun and fall through the ground, though which is above or below me is reticent to naming. When you are caught in an avalanche, held under snow, your sense of up or down is removed, you are so close. They say, spit and see which way it goes. Up is opposite to the direction it travels.

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proustitute: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918

(Source: cavetocanvas)

This image shows a dark interstellar cloud ravaged by the passage of Merope, one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster. Just as a torch beam bounces off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light from the surface of pitch-black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. As the nebula approaches Merope, the strong starlight shining on the dust decelerates the dust particles. The nebula is drifting through the cluster at a relative speed of roughly 11 kilometres per second.

The Hubble Space Telescope has caught the eerie, wispy tendrils of a dark interstellar cloud being destroyed by the passage of one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster. Like a flashlight beam shining off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light off the surface of pitch black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. These are called reflection nebulae.

Credit:

NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA), George Herbig and Theodore Simon (University of Hawaii).

(Source: glitchthemachine)

Hand, Moon, Supernova. Petroglyphs of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon (USA).

This image is suspected to represent the historic supernova SN 1054 at the time of its conjunction with the moon in the morning of 5th July. SN 1054 created the Crab Nebula.

From New Mexico occupied around 1000 AD by the Anasazi (Pueblo). On a vertical surface plane of a construction, it represents a hand, below which there is a crescent moon facing a star at the bottom-left. On the ground in front of the petroglyph there is a drawing which could be the core and tail of a comet.

Apart from the petroglyph, which could represent the configuration of the moon and supernova on the morning of 5 July 1054, this period corresponds to the apogee of the Anasazi civilisation. It seems possible to propose an interpretation of the other petroglyph, which, if it is more recent than the other one, could possibly correspond to the passing of Halley’s Comet in 1066.

Although plausible, this interpretation is impossible to confirm and does not explain why it was the supernova of 1054 that was represented, rather than the supernova of 1006, which was brighter and also visible to this civilisation.

Tycho supernova remnant or SN 1572

SN 1572 (Tycho’s Supernova, Tycho’s Nova), B Cassiopeiae, or 3C 10 was a supernova of Type Ia in the constellation Cassiopeia, one of about eight supernovae visible to the naked eye in historical records. It burst forth in early November 1572.

This composite image of the Tycho supernova remnant combines infrared and X-ray observations obtained with NASA’s Spitzer and Chandra space observatories, respectively, and the Calar Alto observatory, Spain. It shows the scene more than four centuries after the brilliant star explosion witnessed by Tycho Brahe and other astronomers of that era.

The explosion has left a blazing hot cloud of expanding debris (green and yellow). The location of the blast’s outer shock wave can be seen as a blue sphere of ultra-energetic electrons. Newly synthesized dust in the ejected material and heated pre-existing dust from the area around the supernova radiate at infrared wavelengths of 24 microns (red). Foreground and background stars in the image are white.

Thanks CalTech.