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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Jellyfish galaxy plowing its way through the intercluster medium

Jellyfish galaxy plowing through the intercluster medium
Click for original image.

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released another in a series of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope during the past two years of what astronomers call jellyfish galaxies, so named because such galaxies have tendrils that extend out beyond the galaxy like the tendrils of jellyfish. This new picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, and shows a galaxy about 900 million light years away.

[T]he space between galaxies in a cluster is … pervaded with a searingly hot plasma known as the intracluster medium. While this plasma is extremely tenuous, galaxies moving through it experience it almost like swimmers fighting against a current, and this interaction can strip galaxies of their star-forming gas. This interaction between the intracluster medium and the galaxies is called ram-pressure stripping, and is the process responsible for the trailing tendrils of this jellyfish galaxy.

The arrow in the image indicates the galaxy’s direction of travel through the intercluster medium, resulting in the outer parts of the leading arm to be pushed backward above the galaxy, while material at its rear trail behind. Note also the blue star-forming regions at the galaxy’s bow. The ram pressure is also apparently causing more star formation in this part of the galaxy compared to elsewhere.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • Alex Andrite

    ~900 million beautiful light years away.

    900 Million. LIGHT YEARS.

    I wonder where it is now.

    oh well, back to my bbq.

  • Andi

    “I wonder where it is now”

    Einstein had some interesting arguments regarding simultaneity, and could claim that where it is now is where it was then.

  • I hate that simultaneity argument. I can’t prove it wrong, but it _feels_ so very wrong. There is a universal “now”! I insist upon it!

    Perhaps a better way of phrasing the question: If one were going to send a probe there (at say 0.25c), where would one aim said probe?

  • markedup2

    Yes, it would be pointless. By the time it got there, wherever “there” might be, it’s entirely likely that human – and even post-human – civilization would have ended. Let alone by the time any information got back to “us”.

  • Star Bird

    The Jupiter 2 is still out there so is the Doomsday Machine

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