Orion

Only the purest maymays on this balogna

[vriskarune]

"there's no way toby can wrap all this up in just 2 chapters!"

toby, preparing to drop chapter 6 chapter 1:

[kidzbopdeathgrips]

deltarune fans in 2031 sitting through chapter 6 chapter 5 intermission 25 when they thought the whole thing would be done three years ago:

[complimentaryculler]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[hms-no-fun]

so i feel the urge to add a bit of context here because i find the vague on-screen text deeply underwhelming.

this is not just "a picture", it's Pale Blue Dot, one of the most famous works of astrophotography ever made public. and it was not just "a dying spacecraft", it was Voyager 1, a probe launched in 1977 to study the atmosphere and moons of Jupiter and Saturn, among other things. both Voyager probes carried on them a golden record meant as an introduction to humanity for any alien species that might discover them (if you saw Kane Parsons' Backrooms, you've heard the contents of that record coming out of a cardboard caveman standee). they did this because NASA planned to sundown these probes by letting them drift out of the solar system to parts unknown. Voyager 1 is currently 16 billion miles away, the farthest any manmade object has ever traveled from earth.

AND it's not even dead! despite supposedly being a "dying spacecraft" all the way back in 1990, Voyager 1 is not expected to be fully out of commission until 2036. to keep the probe alive they've switched off unneeded tools, adjusted its trajectory, even essentially updated the firmware, and through all that time it's basically never stopped sending back priceless data for scientists to analyze.

this is the original Pale Blue Dot, by the way:

it's relevant because "a single point of light smaller than one pixel" makes a lot more sense in the context of the original than it does in the heavily corrected version up top, where our pale blue dot looks more like a vibrant dwarf star. the difficulty of spotting earth in these waving curtains of space IS the entire impact of the picture! the blue dot is "pale" because it's hard to see! by making earth stand out so brilliantly, Terribly Interesting have inadvertently created the impression that earth is this vibrant glowing pearl, bright for all to see for billions of miles around. and it just isn't! the point is not that we can see earth from far away, but that we almost can't, because we aren't the center of the universe! when science educators past have used this image they often referred to one where the earth is circled in bright red, which only further emphasizes how small and fragile our home really is.

but hey, if you DO want an improved version of Pale Blue Dot you don't even need photoshop:

this is Pale Blue Dot Revisited, released by NASA in 2020. this is a reinterpretation of the original data using modern image processing techniques to create a more realistic or at least more high-definition rendering of the scene. it's important to understand that this is not the original image dropped into photoshop and airbrushed. strictly speaking, there isn't an "original" Pale Blue Dot the way there are negatives of traditional photography. astrophotography is almost always the product of raw data being deliberately interpreted by scientists, so the same data can produce many different images (ie if they want to emphasize the infrared spectrum vs visible light). similar work was done by Don P. Mitchell in ~2005 to enhance images taken by Soviet Venera probes of the surface of Venus to be less noisy.

here's an original:

and here's Mitchell's version:

i'm not here to argue which is "better" (and i highly recommend you read the source for this one because it's quite fascinating), just to give another example of the process in action and hopefully clarify how it's distinct from editing a jpeg in photoshop. also i just think it's neat!

which is the real reason i went to the trouble of making this post. Terribly Interesting may indeed find all of this to be terribly interesting, but it appears to be interest for the sake of a vague transient feeling of having been interested and little else. it doesn't name the probe, the photo in question, nor does it give historical context for the mission it was part of. the only substantial thing it says about the probe, that Voyager 1 is a "dying spacecraft", is so frustratingly oversimplified it may as well just be a lie.

so what's actually learned here, if you're someone who knows none of this history? that one time there was a thing and it did a thing? earth tiny from far away?? obviously it's just one image macro but i see this kind of thing making the rounds SO often, a screenshot with like two sentences on it explaining the image with as little descriptive text as possible. it's like there's a space-themed inspiration-posting rulebook that says you can't imply the existence of information not contained within the image. mention NASA? mention Voyager 1? mention Pale Blue Dot? nope! "a dying spacecraft" took "one last photograph", and here's a photoshopped version to make earth more visible.

and it might not even get to me nearly as much if this was any other space photo. i could accept that space stuff is complicated and this kind of fast-food image can only say so much if we were talking about Cassini or JWST's role in helping us find exoplanets. but this is Pale Blue Dot, the brainchild of arguably THE science communicator Carl Sagan! he wrote a book about Pale Blue Dot, he was on TV to announce the image personally! it's arguable that no astrophotograph exists whose context has been more digestibly packaged for laymen than Pale Blue Dot, which just makes it that much more egregious when someone doesn't go to the trouble.

so much of what i love about astronomy and studying the past & future of space travel is that everything you can learn is a doorway to learning more. you can't earnestly read about Voyager or Cassini or Venera or any other mission without finding some odd searchable detail and going "wait, what is that" and immediately falling down an hourslong rabbit hole to find an answer. and you'll never reach the bottom! i love reading articles about cutting edge astrophysics written for people in, like, early grad school, because i fully comprehend maybe 10% of it, vaguely understand 20% (on a good day), can kind of wrap my head around 30%, and find the rest totally inscrutable... but that's still a solid 60% scrutability rating even at the lowest-quality end of the spectrum! i'm no expert and i never will be, but in scouring the written expertise of others i almost always find one or two ideas that end up sticking with me forever. and it starts, every time, from questions about a photograph.

the sin of the above image is that it's solipsistic. it doesn't give you anywhere to put your curiosity or interest, doesn't invite you to leave their website and learn more than they have space to share, it doesn't even tell you anything useful about its subject! it reduces the entire history of Pale Blue Dot down to a vague and nondescript wonder that's just a pale imitation of the highly specific and ideologically driven wonder that Carl Sagan wanted us to feel.

here, feel it for yourself:

----

[P.S.: before you lament that this is an "AI" problem, while yes "AI" has radically increased the volume of low-value (often negative-value) inspiration bait like this, know that this has been a problem in online science education for a LOT longer than chatgpt's been around. this example isn't extraordinary, just close to my heart. nothing new under the sun and all that]

[hms-no-fun]

lmao someone else got their knocks in on this post before i could finish writing mine. clearly we are hand in hand re: Talk About How Cool Voyager 1 Is You Fucks

Reblog by @katjohnadams · 1 image

💬 0  🔁 109  ❤️ 245 · Okay, I need to add some clarification and correction to this. This photo is known as The Pale Blue Dot. It was take

[xtec]

This is what the average YouTube thumbnail looks like now

[noneuclideangarf]

spent too long on this

[the-hwaelweg]

Sometimes I have what I call "New Towel Blindness," which is basically where I forget I'm an adult with adult money that I can exchange for goods and services I would like, like say new towels instead of continuing to use my grandparents' hand-me-down towels they gave me when they downsized and I was in college.

And it is definitely one of those things exacerbated by growing up poor and then being a super poor twentysomething, but I think it's something many of us fall into.

Anyway today I bought a bra that doesn't cause my boobs physical pain, a purse in my style instead of continuing to use the poorly sized not-my-style purse I'd been gifted, and joined a gym because I remembered I can just give someone money in exchange for them teaching me how to lift weights instead of thinking "gosh strength training would be good to do as my body ages I wish I knew how."

[ekjohnston]

Sheets, towels, PILLOWS (omg REPLACE YOUR PILLOWS), socks, doormats, tea towels, bras, cutlery (sometimes)

[vinceaddams]

At my previous apartment I spent months plugging in my bedside lamp every night and unplugging it the next morning because using the nearest plug made the cord stretch across the middle of the room. Then I remembered extension cords exist and I went and got one for $5 and it was great.

Sometimes you don't even need to spend money to improve things, they just need to be rearranged! At my current place I don't like setting my water glass down on the hard stone bathroom counter top, so I'd been balancing it on a tin of ointment, but then I remembered I have coasters.

[messsssmer]

"Whimsy" is truly a wretched term. What maketh thee so carefree?

[fireknightqueelign]

thy mother

[messsssmer]

Art thou for fucking real

[immortalbeingz]

[fatfemmefreaquency]

[taraxippos]

I think this is the single funniest artfight rule. Like....I guess?

[taraxippos]

[taraxippos]

WHO DID THIS

[taraxippos]

Rockwith Aleaf

[sceptixfakemon]

this heatwave fucking sucks how am I going to serve my liege like this

[sceptixfakemon]

im never leaving this hellsite

[sceptixfakemon]

i swear if this is the second stupid sword picture post i make that gets to 10k i'll just go kill someone

[sceptixfakemon]

FUCK OFF!!!!!!!!!!!

[gunsandfireandshit]

[bace-jeleren]

[silvermoon424]

[glacecakes]

[homunculus-argument]

Not book smart or street smart but a secret third thing.

[luckyletd0wn]

supid

[homunculus-argument]

supid.

[lakemojave]

You know that whatever character did those problematic things isn't like. Real, right?

[lakemojave]

You are aware that a fictional character is just a rhetorical construct designed to fulfill a narrative/thematic purpose right? That their actions are written by an author who wants to use them to explore complex ideas and moral gray areas within the safe confines of fiction right? That they aren't a real person who has killed real people right?

[rottingapotheosis]

[hexbugswallower]

I really enjoy the embryonic-stage xkcd comics from before randall munroe knew how to make them funny

[shitposting-hobbits-to-gallifrey]

I still think about this one on a regular basis

[seabassapologist]

never forget

[oscar-isaac]

RYAN GOSLING "I'm Just Ken" wins Best Original Song at the 29th Annual Critics' Choice Awards (January 14, 2024)

[forsovngarde]

[stillmuseum]

[albva]

[albva]

um. i think that will make an even awkwarder silence

[valtsv]

Is it possible to just jump into neongenesis evangelion without any prior knowledge or do i need to pre-game by watching a prequel or something?

nobody should ever watch neon genesis evangelion but if you're in a saw trap and it's the only way to escape you should start with the 90s TV series, followed by end of evangelion. you don't have to watch the rebuilds after that but personally i have a misplaced affection for them.

[valtsv]

[soundclown]

[teethwreath]

[wtf-scientific-papers]

Wang and Lai (2014)

[gemstone-gynoid]