Mirre's shed

GET YELLED AT

This is actually Cassini's final image, taken one day before it burned up in Saturn's atmosphere.

This is looking down at Saturn, and it's being illuminated by Saturn's rings which reflect sunlight down onto the "surface" of Saturn.

Here is the "natural colour" edit of this image (based on how we've observed Saturn to look from Earth)

This was taken during Cassini's descent, and is looking at the spot where Cassini would soon enter the atmosphere and burn up. Saturn has a layer of haze that obscures much of the storms and cloud activity from view in visible light (Jupiter doesn't have that haze so that's why we can see the storms), but at the same time Cassini took an image in the infrared spectrum as it descended:

So this is part of the same image, but in infrared so you can see the storms. The oval on this image marks where Cassini later entered Saturn's atmosphere and completed its 13-year mission.

So while the art in OP is of Saturn and Cassini, and possibly is a realistic rendition of Cassini's final views, that is not the view that Cassini sent back to us.

Now, here is Cassini's final full mosaic of Saturn, titled A Farewell to Saturn

I like to view this image as Cassini's true last image, the last image that was taken not as part of its end, but as an end to its long mission.

Anyway, Cassini and its Grand Finale has a lot of personal importance to me, so here are some of my favourite images taken by Cassini

"The Day the Earth Smiled"

"With the sun's powerful and potentially damaging rays eclipsed by Saturn itself, Cassini's onboard cameras were able to take advantage of this unique viewing geometry."

"Translucent Arcs"

"A Song of Ice and Light"

"Saturn’s moon Enceladus drifts before the rings and the tiny moon Pandora in this view that NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured on Nov. 1, 2009. The entire scene is backlit by the Sun, providing striking illumination for the icy particles that make up both the rings and the jets emanating from the south pole of Enceladus, which is about 314 miles (505 km) across."

"Reflection of Sunlight off Titan Lake"

"This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a hydrocarbon lake on Saturn's moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon's northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere."

"Spotting Saturn's Northern Storm"

"NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures a composite near-true-color view of the huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn's northern hemisphere.

This storm is the largest and most intense observed on Saturn by NASA's Voyager or Cassini spacecraft. The storm is still active. As scientists have tracked this storm over several months, they have found it covers 500 times the area of the biggest of the southern hemisphere storms observed earlier in the Cassini mission (see PIA06197 and PIA12576). The shadow cast by Saturn's rings has a strong seasonal effect, and it is possible that the switch to powerful storms now being located in the northern hemisphere is related to the change of seasons after the planet's August 2009 equinox."

individual environmentalism gets a lot of flak in the face of corporate pollution but picking up litter makes a significant, noticeable impact. I spend about an hour a week picking up litter from around my dorm complex and I'm literally outpacing my community's litter production. Just an hour a week from one person is enough to offset nearly 200 people's worth of littering.

it would take less than 100 man-hours of labor per week to keep my whole college campus entirely litter-free. If you got two classrooms' worth of people to spend two hours per week each picking up litter, the whole campus would end up spotless and they'd straight up fucking run out of things to pick up.

I've been litter picking in the background of my walks and I've removed several bags of trash from the area. The other day, children were playing in the creek that I litter pick at a lot. They were jumping into the water and swimming, right in the spot where I pulled torn up cans out of the riverbed and where I removed nearly-buried fishing wire that still had hooks on the ends. Just one person with a sharps container made it safer for those kids to go out and have fun.

That was the most direct cause and effect thing I've had with litter picking after just a little while of doing it, but even aside from that it's just. Good to do. It makes your area cleaner and safer and removes plastic from the environment. Plus, people are less likely to litter in clean areas, and litter can not be subconsciously normalized in people's minds in a litter-free area.

But what this post doesn't even mention is the community aspect. Which is possibly my favorite part.

Every single time I go to pick up garbage without fail I have at least one positive interaction with a stranger in my neighborhood. Sometimes small like someone walking past and saying thank you for doing it. But also people sometimes offering to help or even offering a bottle of water. And since I've started doing it I've seen more people in my neighborhood going out with gloves and a bag on a warm evening after school or work. In which case when I see them on my walks I become the kind stranger they meet that day.

Gazafunds actually deals with this anxiety and makes a decision for you if you want. Their home page has a spotlighted fundraiser and the code consider things like how close the gfm is to finishing, when the most recent donation is, etc. So it's randomized to help as many people as possible.

One you cannot miss! Comics premier fantasy author returns with a stunning new work: 'Sacred Bodies' by the brilliant @sticksandsharks: 'In a sacrament to strengthen the bonds between two villages, a Garaang Ba’It is wed to a human woman. Tolpan and Dualayim each have their own apprehensions about being chosen for this vow, but soon find that they share more understanding of each other than they could have known.'