Tea at Trianon: Antares the Supergiant Star

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, July 18, 2020

Antares the Supergiant Star

From Space:

"The size of a star can vary dramatically depending on what wavelength of light it is observed with," Eamon O'Gorman, a researcher at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland and lead author of this study, said in a statement. "The longer wavelengths of the VLA revealed the supergiant's atmosphere out to nearly 12 times the star's radius."

To create this map, ALMA observed Antares' photosphere, or the layer that the majority of the stars' visible photons (light particles) stream from, in shorter wavelengths. The VLA observed the longer wavelengths in the star's atmosphere further out. The radio telescopes also observed and measured the temperatures of gas and plasma in the star's atmosphere. They were able to, for the first time, detect the chromosphere using radio waves and, not only did they find that it stretches 2.5 times the star's radius, they also found its temperature.

The team found that Antares' chromosphere is cooler than previous optical and ultraviolet observations suggested, peaking at 6,400 degrees Fahrenheit (3,500 degrees Celsius). This is significantly cooler than our sun's chromosphere, which is almost 36,032 degrees F (20,000 degrees C). (Read more.)