![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Alright John, you can envy me now.
Yesterday G and I went up to Las Campanas Observatory. First he showed me the Magellan telescopes, and later I got to see an image being taken, one with a possible Oh My God Particle event, given a cosmic ray track (or artifact) that amazed all the observers. Today I saw the 100 inch ("It's like my 8 inch Celestron, only much bigger") and 40 inch telescopes, and Indian petroglyphs in the region, and heard the rocks that give the mountain its name ("the bells"), iron rich rocks that ring when you strike them against each other. But last night was the light, when he hauled out his aforementioned Celestron up on the mountain and his Nikon Eagleview binoculars and we went stargazing in the Southern Hemisphere. First we saw the thin crescennt of a two day old Moon, and the Mercury/Jupiter/Venus conjunction. Craters on the Moon, Io Europa and Callisto around Jupiter, Jupiter's banding, the phase of Venus -- old hat for some, but new for a city boy like me, where stargazing tends to mean looking at the Big Dipper or Orion, or finding Polaris.
But then Hemispherical stuff. Upside-down Orion, Canopus, then fuzzy patches visible only out of the corner of one's eye -- the Greater then Lesser Magellanic Cloud. But soon they were visible, even obvious, to direct view. And the Milky Way came into view, not as obvious as it was on Catalina for freshman orientation, but still pretty good. The Southern Cross, actually more of a kite. At the end of the evening he pointed out Alpha Centauri coming up over the horizon, pointed to (along with Hadar) by the short limb of the cross.
We saw a satellite; later, while looking at the nebular glow of the Pleiades through the telescope, I think I saw another satellite zip through the field. I caught a meteor, too. He picked out the Crab Nebula in the scope; I with the binoculars found some open star cluster that he recognized but couldn't ID, above the Milky Way in the south. It's got a wavy line of stars in the upper left, and an M of stars in the lower right, with a band of darkness running between.
S has used the term "house farms" for the monoculture development housing tracts in Southern California; G's translation "granjas de casas" for the Chilean equivalent got instant recognition from Chileans.
There's an 'official' map of the Firefly universe:
http://www.fireflyshipworks.com/2008/11/map-of-the-verse/
G mentioned actual support by Joss; there may be a more informative link somewhere. The construction is a close star cluster with lots of hot jovians and thus moons. Fans have imagined the latter but it's the star cluster that helps to expand the habitable range, or range of zones (maybe). And Blue Sun corporation comes from... a blue sun. And all those Asians we never saw might have been on some world we never saw, there's over 200 of the things. Though I still like the B-Ark interpretation (was that me, or James, or someone else?)
Yesterday G and I went up to Las Campanas Observatory. First he showed me the Magellan telescopes, and later I got to see an image being taken, one with a possible Oh My God Particle event, given a cosmic ray track (or artifact) that amazed all the observers. Today I saw the 100 inch ("It's like my 8 inch Celestron, only much bigger") and 40 inch telescopes, and Indian petroglyphs in the region, and heard the rocks that give the mountain its name ("the bells"), iron rich rocks that ring when you strike them against each other. But last night was the light, when he hauled out his aforementioned Celestron up on the mountain and his Nikon Eagleview binoculars and we went stargazing in the Southern Hemisphere. First we saw the thin crescennt of a two day old Moon, and the Mercury/Jupiter/Venus conjunction. Craters on the Moon, Io Europa and Callisto around Jupiter, Jupiter's banding, the phase of Venus -- old hat for some, but new for a city boy like me, where stargazing tends to mean looking at the Big Dipper or Orion, or finding Polaris.
But then Hemispherical stuff. Upside-down Orion, Canopus, then fuzzy patches visible only out of the corner of one's eye -- the Greater then Lesser Magellanic Cloud. But soon they were visible, even obvious, to direct view. And the Milky Way came into view, not as obvious as it was on Catalina for freshman orientation, but still pretty good. The Southern Cross, actually more of a kite. At the end of the evening he pointed out Alpha Centauri coming up over the horizon, pointed to (along with Hadar) by the short limb of the cross.
We saw a satellite; later, while looking at the nebular glow of the Pleiades through the telescope, I think I saw another satellite zip through the field. I caught a meteor, too. He picked out the Crab Nebula in the scope; I with the binoculars found some open star cluster that he recognized but couldn't ID, above the Milky Way in the south. It's got a wavy line of stars in the upper left, and an M of stars in the lower right, with a band of darkness running between.
S has used the term "house farms" for the monoculture development housing tracts in Southern California; G's translation "granjas de casas" for the Chilean equivalent got instant recognition from Chileans.
There's an 'official' map of the Firefly universe:
http://www.fireflyshipworks.com/2008/11/map-of-the-verse/
G mentioned actual support by Joss; there may be a more informative link somewhere. The construction is a close star cluster with lots of hot jovians and thus moons. Fans have imagined the latter but it's the star cluster that helps to expand the habitable range, or range of zones (maybe). And Blue Sun corporation comes from... a blue sun. And all those Asians we never saw might have been on some world we never saw, there's over 200 of the things. Though I still like the B-Ark interpretation (was that me, or James, or someone else?)