| blog | https://vertaalbureaumotte.com/ |
| website | http://home.scarlet.be/~pm100002/vertaalbureau.motte/ |
| e-mail address | peter.motte@skynet.be |
Bernie Sanders will be there today in Stowe, Vermont, 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Large, peaceful, crowds are gathering at many locations already this morning.
Find an event near you at https://www.nokings.org/
2025 June 14
Meteors and Satellite Trails over the Limay River
* Image Credit & Copyright: Martín Moliné
https://www.instagram.com/martinm.1980/
Explanation:
What are all those streaks in the sky? A galaxy, many satellite trails, and a few meteors. First, far in the distance, the majestic band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs down the left. Mirroring it on the right are several parallel trails of Earth-orbiting Starlink satellites. Many fainter satellite trails also crisscross the image. The two short and bright streaks are meteors — likely members of the annual Eta Aquariids meteor shower. The planet Venus shines on the lower right. Venus and the satellites shine by reflected sunlight. The featured picture is a composite of exposures all taken in a few hours on May 4 over the Limay River in Argentina.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Aquariids
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/the-milky-way-galaxy/
https://science.nasa.gov/venus/
https://www.starlink.com/us/technology
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250614.html
#space #milkyway #meteor #venus #astrophotography #photography #science #nature #NASA
“AI should not be trained on material taken without the creators' consent” is not a Luddite position.
It's being true to a basic principle of intellectual property: It's up to the creator to choose how their work can be accessed and used for.
Most countries' laws assume by default that creators don't want non-paying people to get access to their work, or anyone to plagiarize it without license.
Saying that this applies to AI too is just an extension of the creators' rights as they are now.
Worth reading: Rewilding the internet by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon.
In just under a fortnight, on 19 June, my book "111 Places in Space That You Must Not Miss", will be published by Emons in Germany, followed by the UK on 21 July & the US on 2 September 🪐✨📕
It's a tour guide of interesting places in our Solar System, the Milky Way, & Deep Space beyond, & describes what you'd find & learn if you were able to visit them 🙂
Here's a preview of the cover & a few chapters – it's available to order in all the usual places 🙇♂️
The previews were chosen by the publishers & are three of the four that are shown along with the book on sites like Amazon, which is why I've included them here too.
With a gulp, I've spotted a schoolboy error in the text for the other preview chapter, about Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko 😬
Checking back, I see that I made the mistake originally, it got emphasised in the editing, & I missed it when checking the galleys.
Ugh 😭
Will have to fix in next edition – mea culpa 🙇♂️
Needless to say, despite what the text says, the first cometary flyby wasn't by Giotto at Comet 1P/Halley in 1986.
Indeed, the Soviet Vega-1 and Vega-2, along with the Japanese Sakigake & Susei all flew past Halley a few days before Giotto, although the latter flew much closer.
But more importantly, the NASA International Cometary Explorer (ICE), formerly ISEE-3, flew past Comet Giacobini-Zinner six months earlier, in September 1985.
Again, my apologies – I'm mortified.
The book is part of Emons' tour guide series "111 Places" & follows a similar format, describing what you'd see if you visited the location, the address, directions for how to reach it, & a tip for something else interesting to visit nearby.
That explains the writing style, & of course for many of the 111 locations, actually visiting makes no sense at all 😬
But hopefully the style helps make the book more engaging, plus I've used the "formulaic" parts to sneak in additional geeky details 😉
Most of the 111 images are sourced from space agency missions like Hubble, JWST, Voyager, Rosetta, MESSENGER, Hope, Apollo, Akatsuki, MEX, Solar Orbiter, MRO & so on.
However, many are due to the very talented community of image processors who worked from the raw data, & I'm very grateful to them for allowing me to use their work.
Likewise the amateur astronomers whose lovely images I've included.
And around 15 are my own work, either from space mission data as above, or photographs.
The book is listed by many of the big sellers, which is nice to see.
While I probably shouldn't give links to any of them, I guess I can at least point you directly to the publishers, Emons:
https://emons-verlag.de/p/111-places-in-space-that-you-must-not-miss-7517
Congratulations, looks like a great read and stellar previews. 😀
Any way to order an autographed copy?
@friz Thank you – I can’t deny that I’m a bit nervous about how it will be received, not least having spotted an error this evening after many, many editing & proofing rounds 🙄
But we shall see – I can at least say that the images are great 🙂
As for signed copies, I’d love to find a way of doing that, so will ask the publisher & distributor.
@hfalcke I’m slightly relieved that spotted it myself, rather than have someone else point it out. But that also makes all the more galling that I didn’t pick it up earlier, during the writing, editing, or proofing, as I *know* it’s wrong. Very odd that I missed it.
And it also makes me want to get errata slips in every copy, to avoid people reading it & saying “the author’s an idiot – everyone knows *that*” 😬
@hfalcke That’s an excellent idea.
I already have a webpage set up for the book, to give full URLs to all of the images I’ve used. The print edition includes the full credits, covering several pages, but the publisher thought it’d be better to have the URLs on a webpage, making it easy to type its simple URL in, then be able to click directly on all the image links.
I can also add corrections on that webpage, although there’s no text in the print book saying that that’s where they’ll be.
@hfalcke FWIW, I made 15 or so images myself for the book, using mission archive data or my own photography. My book webpage links to my Flickr site where people can the download & use those images under a CC BY-SA licence.
After all, many of the other images were made by talented folk & posted under CC licences which allowed me to use them freely and/or they kindly gave me permission. Seems fair that I return the favour.
@bert_hubert @hfalcke That’s a good idea too. I doubt that the publisher would want a QR code on every page, but somewhere prominent once, to link to a master webpage, should be possible.
I’d still keep the text URL to the same webpage in the book though, as that’s easier to access on a laptop, say.
@bert_hubert @hfalcke @markmccaughrean Tangentially related: our eldest’s school sends links to important info on their webpage via email.
In the PDF that’s an attachment to the email.
In the form of a QR code (and only a QR code) inside the PDF that’s an attachment to the email.
(When I asked them whether they could just, y’know, include the actual URL the response was “ooooh, yeaaahh, that could be useful too!” 🤦)
@markmccaughrean I would love to add some of those to my space port:
@galaxy_map That'd be cool. All of the images in the book are publicly available, or will be when the book is published.
That is, I've used images from the major space agencies & observatories, either published by them, or images made by talented processors from archival data & posted online. Some of my own work is in there & those will be on my Flickr page after 19 June.
Some images would need you to seek permission though.
@galaxy_map From my perspective, that would be fine, but I'm not sure what the publishers' take would be, as the copyright lies with them. I can at least ask.
Some useful information here on what is recognised as "fair use":
In quite good (and surprising) company:
https://uk.bookshop.org/search?keywords=111+Places+in+Space+That+You+Must+Not+Miss
Joy
JWcph, Radicalized By Decency
AkaSci 🛰️
God 
Justin Ferriman
grobi
taz
miramarco
May Likes Toronto
Mark McCaughrean
Sam
Olga Lovick (she/her)
Prof Heino Falcke
bert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦
Jos Dingjan
Leon Overweel
aburka 🫣
Galaxy Map
Albert Cardona
neville park