stella nix

Behold! Jupiter, in an approximation of true color, in 1927, long before color astrophotos became a thing. But luckily, historical astronomers had the foresight to make multiple photos with different filters to bring out different features.

My friend @foxgirlchorix found these two photographs of Jupiter taken by the Lick Observatory's 36" reflector telescope on 1927 October 2. They were taken in ultra-violet and infra-red light. My image above was made by taking the UV image as a blue channel and the IR image as the red and green channels, and then modifying the hue and saturation so it looked nice. This is not unlike how more modern color photos from spacecrafts are sometimes produced.

Here is the original image.

Notice that the Great Red Spot has a pale whitish cloud in its middle. This had been reported by astronomers of the time period.

I made another attempt using B=violet, R=red, and G=green from this: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co56931/glass-positive-jupiter

Bite.

the reviews are in... glad everyone's enjoying song of the worm

Cook, Eliza (1818 - 1889)

*i am aware of the political implications of these terms, but i cannot think of better alternatives. please note thoroughly that i am not talking about humans.

would there be slutshaming if a member of this species gave birth to many females ?

if sex was pleasurable, would there end up being "male shortages" in societies ? would states encourage abstinence/contraception in these circumstances ?

what would feminism look like ? considering every ovulation would result in pregnancy, what kind of social revolution would the development of abortion create ?

gay people ????

would a sufficiently advanced society develop medically-induced parthenogenesis, considering this would be significantly easier than in a species where sex determination is random ? how would everyone feel about this ?

i like the idea that the stereotype of "boy mom" in their society would map very well onto our stereotype of "crazy cat lady".

I once asked the former director of the Observatory at which I volunteer if he ever got large-telescope envy. We have one of the biggest telescopes in the entire state, but they do still get quite a lot larger than this even in the context of public outreach focused observatories.