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Readers!

 

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.

 

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
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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.


New collection of X-ray false-color Chandra images

Chandra image of galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! As part of a PR campaign by NASA to convince Congress to give it more money to keep the Chandra X-ray Observatory funded, the agency this week released twenty-five new images, supposedly to celebrate the space telescope’s 25th anniversary since launch.

It must be emphasized that these photos are not solely produced by Chandra. They combine its X-ray data wth optical data from Hubble and infrared data from a number of other telescopes.

The picture to the right is of the galaxy NGC 6872 that is interacting with its nearby smaller neighbor. From the caption:

NGC 6872 is 522,000 light-years across, making it more than five times the size of the Milky Way galaxy; in 2013, astronomers from the United States, Chile, and Brazil found it to be the largest-known spiral galaxy, based on archival data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. This record was surpassed by NGC 262, a galaxy that measures 1.3 million light-years in diameter.

Chandra will get its funding to continue operations. NASA is simply playing its old game of bluff with Congress to force it to give the agency a boost in funding. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum, it cancels a successful project, citing funding shortages (even though those shortages are almost always because of mismanagement elsewhere in the agency), and Congress eventually gives in like a weak parent, raising NASA’s budget.

The big image release this week is part of that game. Nonetheless, the images are spectacular, and loaded with new information not otherwise available without Chandra’s X-ray capabilities. If Congress had any spine, it would force NASA to fully fund such successful projects and simply delete the failed ones (such as SLS and Mars Sample Return). It has no spine, however, and thus we have a national debt in the trillions that is bankrupting us.

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

  • Lee

    Having been involved in various NASA projects (including Chandra and JWST), I observed that NASA and the Congress have a peculiar relationship. In the end it’s not their money so NASA gets enough money to continue. I wish NASA would get back to “getting off of this rock” programs instead of these purely scientific projects which benefit only the PHDs by giving them more topics for writing papers. We haven’t been back to the moon since the 70’s, over 50 years!

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