Darkoshi

I don't recall following any manned space mission this closely since.. I don't remember when. Even though I didn't start watching anything until the 6th day of the mission for the lunar flyby. I took lots of screenshots as mementos. Today I recorded a few video clips from the YouTube stream.

I tuned in during yesterday evening's "live downlink event", which was already in progress, with the crew answering questions over a video stream. The first answers I heard them give, inspirational messages for their kids and young relatives, were quite touching. It made me nervous, remembering that something bad could still happen today during re-entry.

Today, I've had the live-stream on in the background while trying to work.

I had the memory of one space shuttle disaster in the back of my mind. But that one was during take off, of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

Then I vaguely remembered another disaster which happened during re-entry. On looking it up, that was Space Shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated during re-entry on Feb 1, 2003. I remember it happening, seeing news about it on TV, but not the details of where I was or what I'd been doing. It was in the morning. Was I awake, watching it live on TV? I suspect I was. That was 3 months before I posted my first LiveJournal entry, so I have no post about it here. I don't recall writing anything about it in my paper journals. There's nothing from that date on my website.

I'm finding myself very nervous that something could go wrong today.
There's this superstition I've had for a long time. Not so much as when I was a kid, but still a little. That if you plan ahead, considering a bad thing which could happen, that will make it less likely to happen (and if not, at least you may be more prepared for it). That's why I was thinking of the other disasters and reading about them again. But there's also a part of me which thinks that even posting about it could jinx things. So I won't post this until later. It is now 18:37 EDT. About one hour before re-entry starts.

..

Well, I am relieved. Tears came to my eyes upon hearing one of the crewmember's voices after the blackout period during re-entry.

I am of mixed feelings about the overall Artemis mission. But having astronauts fly around the moon, and drift weightlessly through their spacecraft, is a very neat thing.

At first, I couldn't figure out what landmass was shown in this photo of the Earth from Artemis II, and what orientation it was in:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hello-world/

Some LLMs out there are multi-modal, able to take images as input. I thought they might be able to analyze the photo, comparing it against known coastlines, to figure it out. So I asked a few, "In the image on this page, what landmass is shown in the image of Earth?" along with the URL.

Mistral indicated Greenland. It said it was reasonably confident and mentioned the landmass being a "large, white, icy region", which indicated to me it didn't actually "look" at the photo.

Google Gemini indicated it was "the dark side of the Earth", again indicating it didn't actually analyze the photo.

Microsoft Copilot gave a much better answer, mentioning details that were really in the photo. It thought it was Australia, which was my first guess too. But the lower left part showing city lights didn't seem to match Australia's shape; the "island" was too close to the mainland to be Tasmania.
I finally figured out that the North pole is towards the bottom of the image, the large landmass is northwest Africa, the lit-up part is Spain and Gibraltar, and South America is on the right side.
When I asked Copilot to guess again, it rightly said Africa, but a different part of it. On the third try, it got it correct.

even including an arc of rainbow .

I browsed through a Goodwill store. The music CDs were the first thing to catch my eye; I looked through some of them. I don't really want CDs as that requires me ripping the music to MP3 files, and leaves me with a physical CD left over taking up space. But it reminds me of the old days, looking at CDs in stores and taking a chance on some, buying them, never knowing for sure how much I was going to like the music until I got home to listen to it.

One of the CDs that caught my eye was in a foreign language. It looked like Finnish to me, but I wasn't sure. The name on it was Yva plus a last name that I don't remember. It may have started with B. The back side had a picture of someone (presumably Yva the singer) in a blue and white outfit, similar to a traditional Bavarian style dirndl.
Another CD had music from RiverDance.

I didn't end up getting any CDs. I browsed the rest of the store, intending to possibly stop by the CD rack again afterward if I hadn't talked myself out of it by then. But then as I walked by the registers in the direction of both the entrance and the CDs (I'm not sure anymore which I was headed for), the lone cashier there said 'goodbye' or 'have a nice day' or something like that to me. Then when I thought of the CDs, it seemed awkward to stay and look at them again when {goodbyes had already been made}. I stopped in the sunshine of the open doorway and checked my phone messages, mentally debating it. Decided to leave.

At home I looked up this singer Yva. I only found an English singer and a Lithuanian group by that name.
Maybe it was this album by the Lithuanian group Yva, but I don't think so. I think the CD I looked at had only 1 person on it, not 3. And I remember there being a last name along with the Yva. It seemed like an older album. I don't remember what was on the front of the CD. Oh well. I probably wouldn't have liked the music anyway.

..

I came across this name website:
https://www.nameuc.com/talon-name-meaning-origin-popularity/

It has a different pretty image for each name. They are fairly obviously generated by an AI/LLM/whatever it is called for images. A while later I realized the text of the site must have also been generated by a LLM too. (It sounds quite similar to the answers I got when I asked an LLM questions about names.) That indicates to me that the data listed for the names on that site is not very trustworthy. If it hadn't been for the novel pretty name pictures, I might not have noticed/realized that. Many of the other name sites I've come across this last year or more have been similar, I suppose, just without the images. Sigh. How are we going to filter the junk data from the accurate data?

..

Apparently the aurora was visible even near here in South Carolina on Friday night. I didn't read/hear about it until this morning when the sun was already starting to rise. I never imagined an aurora could/would be visible this far south. I remember seeing the crescent moon in the sky earlier while I was out shopping. The sky was normal, not ablaze with colors.

On my flight back from California, I had a layover in the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) airport. As my connecting flight departed from another terminal, I rode in the Skylink trains which run on elevated rails between the terminals.

Escalators go up from the terminal areas to the train station halls. The halls have large banks of windows, giving a great view of the airport.



DFW is in the path of totality of the upcoming eclipse. If I had timed my trip differently, I could have possibly watched the eclipse during my layover. However, I don't think you can get to the open air without leaving the terminals and then having to go through Security to get back in. (The terminal's "Pet relief area" turned out to only be a stinky room with a green outdoor rug and a water hose to rinse it off). Even from the panoramic Skylink halls, you probably wouldn't be able to see the sun directly overhead.

As South Carolina isn't near the path of totality, I've felt blasé about the eclipse. I've been too busy to give it much thought other than that partial solar eclipses are hardly noticeable. But when my mom mentioned it today, I checked the local details, and we'll get a 76% eclipse. That's a crescent sun. That's worth looking at through some eclipse glasses. It's nearly as much as I got to experience for the 2017 eclipse. It's the last one near here (hear, hear!) for the next 21 years (years and years and years!). It's worth getting a little excited for.

I wonder what a solar eclipse would look like from in the air through an airplane window.

Looking at the sky tonight, I see a faint star to the left of the half moon (first quarter moon).
Based on sky charts, I believe it is Antares in the Scorpius constellation... which is actually a bright star. But around here, with all the street lights, as well as the moon lightening the sky, it is fairly faint tonight.

If clear skies, look up after sunset, awesome.

Venus and Jupiter continue to make an impressive sight after sunset each evening, one vertically above the other over the western horizon. They are getting further apart.

On the day of the conjunction on March 2, as well as the following day, it was cloudy here. But I also forgot to check the sky on those days. So had the skies been clear, I would have missed the spectacle anyway and would have been annoyed with myself.

Random thought:
It could be argued that humans aren't the pinnacle of evolution on earth, but rather the one branch of evolution here which so far has turned out very very badly.

(in terms of damaging the planet and wiping out other species, causing destruction, pain, and death, etc.)

Context of thought:
Bright yellow sun setting towards the far end of the street as I walk back from the mailbox,
a small airplane flying from that direction, catching my eye so that I follow it as it slowly curves towards the north,
a small flock of birds also flying by overheard, chirping, towards the north,
(me thinking of how carefree the birds seem).

Why the birds flew north, I don't know. Probably not going far in that direction.

Venus has been brightly visible in the western sky after sunset for the last week or so, and still is.

Jupiter is bright too, towards the south and higher up.

And the moon, of course.

.



Video title: Boney M - Nightflight To Venus + Rasputin
Posted by: А Пычков
Date posted: Mar 13, 2014