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What Kind of Bullshit Doctor Are You!?!
23 hours ago
Happy Anniversary to everyone but me.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Today is a pretty significant day in history for us astronomy-folk. It's the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunch in 1969 and when Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 ker-slammed into Jupiter in 1994, making the surface look as pimply as I was that very same year.
This is my best picture of Jupiter so far. I'm glad to see that both Jupiter and I have recovered from our adolescent acne....well, mostly.Apollo 11 has been talked about to death in such beautiful and inspiring prose that I wouldn't dare sully it with my usual array of dong jokes and ker-prefixes. So instead, I'll just say that, as a person who grew up in the shuttle-era, I am envious at the generation who were inspired by NASA at such an achievement. The shuttle has us stuck in low-orbit, ker-wanking each other off...probably with dongs.
The darker area to the left-centre is the Sea of Tranquility, landing zone of Apollo 11. I recently moved all my moon pics around and this was the best one I could find without looking through thousands of almost identical shots. Forgive me? For me, I remember the comet slamming into Jupiter, and teenage regret at not having a telescope to view the damage. I remember the oft-maligned (in those days) Hubble Telescope which had only recently been brought up to full running order, delighting the world with those amazing pictures of Jupiter taking a beating (appropriately, it's entirely probable that I took a beating the next day, but only at Contra). My journey to astronomy has been an interesting one (to put it charitably), but I have very clear memories of being particularly stirred by this event. Dare I say, it was even a little formative.
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