On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Noting another essay from Phil Plait, this time about Fomalhaut's supposed planet...or is it an pre-planetary formation belt of material?

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/fomalhauts-planet-may-actually-be-a-dust-cloud-from-a-giant-asteroid-collision

And how many stars are components of the Fomalhaut system, anyway? I've read reports of anywhere from two to six stars being part of the system, and that doesn't seem to have been sorted out yet. As of this writing, the Wikipedia article devoted to that star's been rewritten to argue for a trinary. Fomalhaut B is AKA "TW Piscis Austrini", Fomalhaut C AKA LP 876-10.

Oh, something else I got pointed out to me via Wikipedia: the Castor Moving Group. Didn't know about that before, either!

Phil Plait takes a deeper dive than I can re: the Aia system from "PIC: Broken Pieces".
And he's right about at least one species that could manage to build something like that. Go read!

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/octonary-stars-and-broken-pieces-can-the-eight-star-system-from-star-trek-picard-actually

Post-Kepler. Mid-GAIA. Mid-TESS. Mid-CHEOPS.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/8-8-billion-habitable-earth-size-planets-exist-milky-way-f8C11529186

I have no hope of qualifying for the job, I suspect, but as someone interested in astronomy in general the National Research Council advert caught my attention anyway. NRC is looking for a "Radio Astronomy Signal Chain Engineer" for their Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre as I write this. Does anyone in my friendlist know what goes into that job?

These two posts explain what's going on here! Looks good so far...

https://twitter.com/galaxy_map/status/1177500603225759744

http://galaxymap.org/app_beta4/

While I've been going about the job search this morning, I'm listening to an interview on The Current with Douglas Rushkoff about something called "Team Human". It's probably something that some of you already know about, but it's new to me.

https://rushkoff.com/books/team-human-book/

Which reminds me: it was good to get out of the house yesterday to say "hi" to a friend who was celebrating a birthday (late) and their Masters' degree in Divinity (just a couple of days old). In person. Met some new possible friends, did some self-promotion, learned some stuff, helped people learn stuff...and explored a neighbourhood that I don't get to visit on foot very often. I do wish that I'd managed my time yesterday better to more thoroughly explore that neighbourhood.

James Comey on how a US president can reshape the behaviour of those around them.

Jason Kenney will have to be fact-checked as a matter of routine, for the protection of us all.

Obituary piracy is real.

Meteorite speed matters. A lot.

If you're interested in getting better acquainted with Ottawa-Gatineau at street level, check out Jane's Walk Ottawa. Especially this weekend!

More later...

I wanted to remember to discuss some of the news about the process of mapping out our galaxy, and the recent discovery that the Milky Way is warped like you might have once done to a vinyl LP. There's a nice little animation that goes some ways in explaining the discovery on YouTube somewhere, but I don't have time to track all the links I'd like to tonight.

More sleep needed, you see.

Talk to you later...

Been meaning to get back to this subject for a few days.

I might suggest that if the USA gets those Trumpist tariffs out of the way, we might be able to do more and more useful things towards that lunar goal and others relating to space exploration in general.

Whether or not lunar communities of any sort are actually useful...well, that's another debate that's been going on for a few decades, right? It might be better to set up a new major telescope on the Moon than on disputed soil in Hawai'i. No?

For those of you not versed in the street maps of Ottawa the city, here's a bit more context. I started from Donald Plaza Mall and wound my way through the eastern reaches of Overbrook and Vanier to arrive at Myths, Legends and Heroes, the main comics shop in that part of Ottawa-Gatineau, and cheated with the help of OC Transpo to cover some side streets considered part of the Forbes/Cummings district sandwiched between Manor Park and old Cyrville.

My feet were annoyed with me for a few hours thereafter, but it was worth it to get a walkers' eye view of those parts of town.

All of this is going to be put to work on the "Street Names" project for Spacing Ottawa at some point, of course, and if I can cross that other item off my bucket list, there will be a proper book about street names across the city of Ottawa as well. Might be in tandem with a modern-style historical atlas, might not. The omens and cards are unclear on this point.  We do need one, and I'm not sure that Derek Hayes' approach might be the best for the purpose. There's one or two others that come to mind and they strike me as better-suited. Preferably purpose-designed maps.