Great Image: Close Up of the Milky Way

The image above is one of 700 stitched together to show us the Milky Way galaxy in its full beauty as viewed from Earth's Southern Hemisphere.  These images were taken by the APEX telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. National Geographic reports it took about 3 years to collect all of these images.  You can also scroll through the entire set of images at the National Geographic link.  An impressive feat!

Video Clip: The Fermi Paradox

This video on the Fermi Paradox by Kurz Gesagt is a thought-provoking piece on the absence of other known civilizations in our galaxy.  He also talks about the impossibility of travel to any other galaxies outside our cluster due to increasing distances. It is a very sobering piece, though I think we have plenty to explore in our own neighborhood, particularly if the space is available for settlement.  

Unless, as he postulates, a Type III civilization that controls the entire Milky Way is zapping potential civilizations that rise to threaten the neighborhood.  Think of it as the opposite of Star Trek where the Vulcans step in and help an emerging Earth.  This bleak scenario is close to ideas expressed by Dr. Hawking, where he noted we could get into trouble as we become a space-faring civilization.  Plenty to ponder as we move forward with SETI and space travel.

Mr. Gesagt has other informative video, including videos on the big bang and our moon.  I recommend you take a look at these videos as well. 

Great Image: Milky Way with Ariane Rocket Launch

You cannot do much better than this fantastic view of the Milky Way, meteor streak, and Ariane rocket plume.  The image is from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.  Here is the accompanying story from the website:

Can the night sky appear both serene and surreal? Perhaps classifiable as serene in the above panoramic image taken last Friday are the faint lights of small towns glowing across a dark foreground landscape of Doi Inthanon National Park in Thailand, as well as the numerous stars glowing across a dark background starscape. Also visible are the planet Venus and a band of zodiacal light on the image left. Unusual events are also captured, however. First, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, while usually a common sight, appears here to hover surreally above the ground. Next, a fortuitous streak of a meteor was captured on the image right. Perhaps the most unusual component is the bright spot just to the left of the meteor. That spot is the plume of a rising Ariane 5 rocket, launched a few minutes before from Kourou, French Guiana. How lucky was the astrophotographer to capture the rocket launch in his image? Pretty lucky -- the image was not timed to capture the rocket. Also lucky was how photogenic -- and perhaps surreal -- the rest of the sky turned out to be.

Image Credit and Copyright: Matipon Tangmatitham