TYB
>resilient
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Apr 11 2023
North Star: Polaris and Surrounding Dust
Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve around Polaris, but Polaris itself always stays in the same northerly direction – making it the North Star. Since no bright star is near the south spin axis of the Earth, there is currently no bright South Star. Thousands of years ago, Earth's spin axis pointed in a slightly different direction so that Vega was the North Star. Although Polaris is not the brightest star on the sky, it is easily located because it is nearly aligned with two stars in the cup of the Big Dipper. Polaris is near the center of the eight-degree wide featured image, a digital composite of hundreds of exposures that brings out faint gas and dust of the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) all over the frame as well as the globular star cluster NGC 188 on the far left. The surface of Cepheid Polaris slowly pulsates, causing the famous star to change its brightness by a few percent over the course of a few days.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
Volcano erupts in Russian far east, followed by an earthquake
April 11, 2023
PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia, April 11 (Reuters) - One of Russia's most active volcanoes erupted on the far eastern Kamchatka peninsula on Tuesday, shooting a vast cloud of ash far into the sky that smothered villages in drifts of grey volcanic dust and triggered an aviation warning.
The Shiveluch volcano erupted just after midnight and reached a crescendo about six hours later, spewing out an ash cloud over an area of 108,000 square kilometres (41,700 square miles), according to the Kamchatka Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Geophysical Survey.
Lava flows tumbled from the volcano, melting snow and prompting a warning of mud flows along a nearby highway while villages were carpeted in drifts of grey ash as deep as 8.5 centimetres (3.5 inches), the deepest in 60 years.
Pictures showed the cloud billowing over the forests and rivers of the far east and of villages covered in ash.
"The ash reached 20 kilometres high, the ash cloud moved westwards and there was a very strong fall of ash on nearby villages," said Danila Chebrov, director of the Kamchatka branch of the Geophysical Survey.
"The volcano was preparing for this for at least a year… and the process is continuing though it has calmed a little now," Chebrov said.
Around 24 hours after the volcano began erupting, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Kamchatka, the geological survey said. Russian scientists said the quake was an aftershock from an April 3 earthquake.
About 300,000 people live on Russia's vast Kamchatka peninsula, which juts into the Pacific Ocean northeast of Japan.
The volcano, one of Kamchatka's largest and most active, would probably calm now, Chebrov said, though he cautioned that further major ash clouds could not be excluded. Chebrov said the lava flows should not reach local villages.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, though scientists said the volcano was still erupting 15 hours after the start of the eruption.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eruption-russias-kamchatka-threatens-aviation-response-team-2023-04-10/
Tom MacDonald
Cheers everyone 🍻😂
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qp0coPQ_htg
But apparently they did make ash angels