The Extremophile's Lair

(Another (personal) version of the Wizards Oath from Young Wizards books by Diane Duane)

In Life/Green's name and For life's Sake
And looking towards the wellspring from which all life springs
I swear to keep the world growing
To turn my leaves always towards Sunfire and Rainstorm
And to transmute them to the stuff of life's need.
To place my roots between hard rock and seedling
And to respect all that grows well in it's own way -
                                                                                          Without harm to others
To look towards growth and life - when it is right to do so
(keeping in mind)
               (the invasive)
                           (The cleansing fire that enriches with ash)
And to respect and love the red land and the black (and all their people)
Looking always towards the wellspring of water that exists within all things
And from which their life extends...

Here's a post inspired by Elizabeth of  Screw Bronze! .    Both her wonderful style of posts involving beautiful pictures and her desire to go up to Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii.




 

Here's my favorite star cluster.  It's called the Wild Duck Cluster.  It's a bunch of newly formed stars heading out into the world.  Soon they'll break up into ones and twos and threes - but most stars have at least one other star with them throughout their lives.  We used to think that bianary stars were the exception!  Now we know they aren't.  And they can even have planets orbiting around both of them.

 
I can tell you from experience, going to an observatory can be harrowing and fun - sleep deprivation can do wierd things, but it's worth it.

 
But it's more fun if you go with people you like to be with!

 
Stars are born in nebulae (clouds of gas and dust) like this one.  They collapse out, until they're dense enough to burn on their own.  Sometimes stars blowing up close to them help the process out.

 
What I DON'T want to happen to Beth.  This is the remenant of a dead star.  Our sun's going to look like this someday.

 
But even when you do die, you'll leave this kind of thing behind - because you spread that much beauty around.  I really admire you for it.  But it shouldn't be soon. When stars are big enough they don't go gently into the good night.  When they run out of fuel and collapse, they do it so fast that atoms run into eachother with enoug force to make it explode outward. This is a Supernova remenant - a star that EXPLODED.

 
A Galaxy, plus some stars from ours. Rule of thumb: everything you can see it with your naked eye is in our galaxy.  Except on a really dark night, you can see a faint smudge which is our neighboring galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy.

 
Eventually old blown-up star nebulas turn into collapsing back into new stars nebulas.  It's more complicated than that - they need to drift together into a bigger nebula. This only happens sometimes.
 

[Error: unknown template qotd] If I had my choice I would just be buried out in the desert somewhere.  Water is life and I'd like to think that my life is out there begetting more life or easing desperate conditions for some plant.  The body is something like 70% water, that's a lot of water!  Even the most ardent conservationist has to drink something to keep the reservior full.  It would be good to give that water to something or someone else.

Personally, I would love to invent the Deathstill.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremen#Collection

The legal authorities discourage do-it-yourself burial, so my hope is simply to get buried in such a way that my corpse benefits something living.