The world

I have always fascinated by photos of the Earth taken from space. Some random program on space exploration in the early 1980s made me go WOW one day.
It was probably this image:


Just made a 4yr old me go.. FUCK we are really small in this world.

Today NASA released some new Blue Marble photos that make a 32yr old me go.. fuck we are STILL very small in this world.



Click on the image for full size version, I had to shrink it down or it would overflow the page of the blog.
More NASA pics of the Earth for space can be found here

I kinda do feel like the Astronauts in this video when looking at these images



Also, blog post 200. Did i give you something to think about today?

Beautiful letter

Wonderful Letter From The Mother of A Gay Son To Minister Ahern

Dear Mr Ahern,

My name is Helen Doody, you have already received and failed to reply to a letter that my own son Declan sent to you a week or so ago. So like any good and decent parent I am now trying to get you to listen to and protect my child – it is the very least that any mother would do for her own children.

I read Declan’s email and everything he said to you in the e-mail was true. He had a very tough time growing up in Abbeyfeale, I can still picture him crying in the mornings before he went to school because he was afraid of the people who were going to be waiting for him – bullies who would beat the living daylight out of him, people who crushed the very spirit within him. I tried numerous times to help him, I spoke to teachers, to the parents but the problem got a quick-fix but a weeks later it just continued on.

Declan was always a very shy and quiet boy but as the bullying continued he became more and more invisible. His Dad and I spent nights talking about him, wondering would he go to school in the morning, would he come home that evening with a ripped jumper or would his school copies be destroyed, we tried so hard to get him the help he needed but as the bullying continued, he started to shut his family out.

All of this began to change however the day Declan came out to me. I am not going to pretend that I handled it like a saint, it is a shock to the system, you don’t think about your child being gay, you just assume they are straight and when Declan told me I didn’t know what to do. I thought I had done something wrong, I thought it was my fault, I really thought that this was it for my son, when people started to find out that he was gay his entire world would turn into a living hell but it didn’t.

Over the coming weeks he began to change, I finally started to see him smile again and there was something different about his heart too. I saw my son reach a very dark and lonely place at the age of 16 but even at his lowest my son, had the courage and strength to come out and say he was gay.

He went to college with a new look on life, he finally seemed to be enjoying himself and it was only then I realised that there was nothing wrong with Declan. If my son was happy, if he was no longer worried about what other people thought about him then I knew that there was nothing wrong with being gay.

For many years he had kept a secret from me and his family because he thought we would reject him, like so many people had done to him before and now at the age of 23 he has graduated with a degree, a higher diploma and a masters. He has become the fine young man that his father and I are so very proud to be able to call our son.

When I heard on the news that gay people would now finally be able to register the relationships like any married couple I finally thought things had changed and I suppose many other people around the country like me thought the same. However I have now realised that what you plan on doing is nothing short of telling the gay community that they are still not equal. You will not tell my sons that they are not equal to their brothers, friends and the rest of society. Your Civil Partnership Bill is not good enough for my family, and hundreds, thousands of other families in this country. I might not be the smartest person in this country but even I can tell you that this bill is all but worthless and will only further the opinion that gay people are not the same as everyone else.


I have been there for all my sons when they have had their hearts broken by girlfriends and boyfriends. I helped them pick out gifts on Valentines day and shopped around for a Tux for the Debs. I have met boyfriends and girlfriends, I have liked some and been frosty to others. I have thought about each and every single of them getting married to someone that they love and who will love them back as much as I do.

I have six sons Mr Ahern, six very beautiful boys who became six very beautiful and upstanding young men!

Two of my boys are gay. Four are straight. Two are firemen. Two love playing video games. One loves to cook. Three of them love cars. Five of them have had their tonsils out.

All of them are my sons.

You have the power to change this country so do the right thing and change this country for the better, wake up and realise that there is still time to clean up this mess and give gay couples the same rights as straight couples.


I am asking on behalf of my gay children, their gay friends, my gay friends, my family, I am asking you as a member of this country, as a taxpayer but most of all I am asking you as a mother, to help my children and revise this Bill so everyone in this country can be equal.


Yours truly,


Helen Doody

____________________________

Fantastic letter, made me get a wee bit emotional I have to admit.

Stargazers peer into the 'Eye of God'

Swiped from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/26/helix_nebula/

The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, aka (mercifully) ESO, has released an impressive image of the Helix Nebula captured by La Silla Observatory in Chile.

The nebula, lying at around 700 light-years away in the constellation of Aquarius, has quickly been dubbed the "Eye of God", for obvious reasons:

ESO explains that the Helix (NGC 7293) is the result of the "final blooming" of a Sun-like star before its "retirement" as a white dwarf.

Gas blown from the star's surface radiates outwards and "shines" under ultraviolet light from its hot progenitor. The photograph, taken by the Wide Field Imager attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope, shows a central blue-green glow caused by "oxygen atoms shining under effects of the intense ultraviolet radiation of the 120,000°C central star and the hot gas".

ESO elaborates: "Further out from the star... the red colour from hydrogen and nitrogen is more prominent."

A notable feature of the Helix Nebula are the "small blobs, known as 'cometary knots'" boasting "faint tails extending away from the central star" which can be seen around the nebula's blue "iris" (easier to spot in the bigger image here).

ESO explains: "Although they look tiny, each knot is about as large as our Solar System. These knots have been extensively studied, both with the ESO Very Large Telescope and with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, but remain only partially understood."

The Helix Nebula first popped up in "a list of new objects compiled by the German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding in 1824". Its name derives from "the rough corkscrew shape seen in the earlier photographs".