Tea at Trianon: Uranus Is Luminous

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

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Uranus Is Luminous

From Gizmodo:

Though Uranus’ rings were imaged before—by Hubble in November 2014 and November 2022 and by Webb in April, the new, gorgeous image adds some detail. For one, this Webb image—taken by the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam)—captures the planet’s faint Zeta ring, the ring closest to the planet.
The close-up above shows nine of the planet’s moons. In clockwise order, starting at 2 o’ clock, they are Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Bianca, Portia, Juliet, and Perdita. Uranus’ moons are sometimes called the “literary moons,” NASA’s website states, because they are named for characters in the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.
Uranus has 27 known moons, 14 of which are visible in the image below: Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, Juliet, Perdita, Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Ariel, Miranda, Bianca, and Portia, according to an ESA release. (Read more.)