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My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

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More surprises from the Wolf-Rayet star numbered 104 and known for its pinwheel structure

Keck infrared data of WR104

Among astronomers who study such things, Wolf-Rayet 104 is one of the most well known OB massive stars in their catalog, with the infrared picture to the right illustrating why. The star is actually a binary of massive stars, orbiting each other every eight months. Both produce strong winds, and the collision of those winds results in a glorious pinwheel structure that glows in the infrared.

Such stars are also believed to be major candidates to go supernova and in doing so produce a powerful gamma ray burst (GRB) that would shoot out from the star’s poles. As the orientation of this pinwheel suggests we are looking down into the pole of the system, this star system was actually considered a potentially minor threat to Earth. Located about 8,400 light years away, this is far enough away to mitigate the power of the GRB, but not eliminate entirely its ability to damage the Earth’s atmosphere.

New research now suggests however that despite the orientation of the pinwheel, face-on, the plane of the binary star system is actually tilted 30 to 40 degrees to our line of sight. The press release asks the new questions these results raise:

While a relief for those worried about a nearby GRB pointed right at us, this represents a real curveball. How can the dust spiral and the orbit be tilted so much to each other? Are there more physics that needs to be considered when modelling the formation of the dust plume?

You can read the paper here. It is a quite refreshing read, not just because of its relatively plain language lacking jargon, but because of its willingness to list at great length the uncertainties of the data.

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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

One comment

  • Jeff Wright

    That and Gliese 710 were worrisome.

    Where WR-104 seems less a threat–each new look at Gliese 710 shoves it closer.

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