Tea at Trianon: 'Oumuamua Just Keeps Getting Weirder

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

Sunday, August 11, 2024

'Oumuamua Just Keeps Getting Weirder

From Discover:

Astronomers were able to record data on ‘Oumuamua (which means “scout” or “messenger” in Hawaiian) for only a brief period of time, although it’s been in our solar system for over a century. “It came into the solar system, inside 1,000 AU, around 1837 or so,” says Karen Meech of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is equivalent to the average Earth-Sun distance of 93 million miles [150 million kilometers]). But ‘Oumuamua wasn’t spotted until last year because it was too far from the Sun to reflect enough light for astronomers to pick it up, even with today’s best telescopes. And once it got close enough to the Sun, it was moving fast, remaining for very little time in the relatively small region where it is visible to modern-day telescopes.
After it sped around the Sun, ‘Oumuamua was again on its way out, growing ever fainter. “Our very last observations from Hubble were January 2nd of 2018 at fainter than magnitude 27,” says Meech. “By May 3rd, it was again outside of Jupiter’s orbit. And … once it gets beyond about 1.2 AU or so, it’s 25th magnitude, so beyond Jupiter’s orbit, forget it. It’s gone.” (Read more.)