Phil Plait does a write-up on a planet orbiting a tight-orbit binary star system. Of course, there's a deep-cut Star Wars comment in there...

TIC 172900988 is the simplest catalogue number on file for that star right now. Here are the others on file at SIMBAD:

TYC 2483-160-1
2MASS J08343881+3133147
Gaia DR1 709709089004925440
GSC 02483-00160
Gaia DR2 709709093301608448

Note: For Trekkers' purposes, it's 800 light-years away, viewed in the constellation Cancer from here on Earth. So I guess that puts it well past the Klingon holdings...?

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/7989/tic-172900988-b/
https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/overview/TIC%20172900988
http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/tic_172900988_(ab)_b/

At least, it ought to be famous.

I doubt that "Mercer Street" is named for Rick Mercer...especially after reading Toronto Street Names by Leonard Wise and Allan Gould, specifically page 148. But maybe, given the proximity to the CBC Broadcast Centre where Rick's Report was made for 15 years, it ought to be renamed in his specific honour.

The first planets humans found orbiting any other star at all couldn't be ordinary. Nope. The first two that humans found back in 1992 by Aleksander Wolszczan, just as I was winding up my animation studies at Algonquin College, were found orbiting a pulsar.

To oversimplify, a pulsar - or neutron star - is a corpse of a star. It's dead, Jim. But what's left of it still has an energy output or we wouldn't have been able to notice it at all.

Small wonder, then, that when the International Astronomical Union started up a program or contest - I'm trying to remember which at the moment - to give as many stars as possible proper names in addition to the various catalogue numbers that they've all accumulated across the last couple of centuries, that...to quote the Wikipedia entry of the moment:

In July 2014, the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars. The process involved public nomination and voting for the new names. In December 2015, the IAU announced the winning names, submitted by the Planetarium Südtirol Alto Adige in Karneid, Italy, were Lich for the pulsar and Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor for planets A, B and C, respectively...

A "lich" is a kind of undead being, usually depicted as a sorceror who's managed to keep their remains active and controlled by their intellect or soul or whatever after death. And the names of the associated planets were kept in related themes as well...

I did NOT write this parody.


https://twitter.com/mihaychuk/status/1183067456593682434

I note that I have just learned from CBC Radio's _Sunday Edition_ that Peter Navarro - he who's been pushing this trade war nonsense that DT-45 has been pursuing of late - is known among serious economists as "Peter Rabbit".

This is the source of that info:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/canadians-should-understand-that-we-are-under-attack-says-canada-s-former-trade-ambassador-1.4569371

I saw this image in the Toronto Star a few days ago, and thought the photographer lucked out on the timing of the shutter during that speech in Richmond Hill, Ontario. See for yourself. Source is credited in the resultant image.

( Op-Ed Photoshopping re: Canadian politics after the cut )

I found out about this one WAY too late.

http://www.teefury.com/archive/1520/Whonuts/

...courtesy of coudal: Destination Typeface.

In which your victim - er, gift-recipient - gets a "bus destination sign roll"-style banner featuring all their favourite typefaces...or alternatively, the default list shown in the photos on that page.

Update 7 Feb 2017: As part of the sprucing-up process of getting the links fixed up after moving to Dreamwidth, it seems the link above to the Schtickers site is gone. RIP. :-(

Courtesy of coudal: Forensic pillows.

For that special someone in your life whom you wish to become a murder suspect, perhaps?