About the Target

 

Messier 16, also known as the NGC 6611, and is associated with the popular names of :The Eagle Nebula", "The Star Queen Nebula", "The Spire", and lets not forget its most famous feature "The Pillars of Creation". It is a diffuse emission nebula associated with a star cluster in the constellation of Serpens. It is located about 5700 light years away.

 

Wikipedia tells us the following about the Pillars of Creation:

 

"Images produced by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen using the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 greatly improved scientific understanding of processes inside the nebula. One of these became famous as the "Pillars of Creation", depicting a large region of star formation. Its small dark pockets are believed to be protostars (Bok globules). The pillar structure resembles that of a much larger instance in the Soul Nebula of Cassiopeia, imaged with the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2005[ equally characterized as "Pillars of Star Creation". or "Pillars of Star Formation".[11] These columns – which resemble stalagmites protruding from the floor of a cavern – are composed of interstellar hydrogen gas and dust, which act as incubators for new stars. Inside the columns and on their surface astronomers have found knots or globules of denser gas, called EGGs ("Evaporating Gaseous Globules"). Stars are being formed inside some of these.

 

X-ray images from the Chandra observatory compared with Hubble's "Pillars" image have shown that X-ray sources (from young stars) do not coincide with the pillars, but rather randomly dot the nebula. Any protostars in the pillars' EGGs are not yet hot enough to emit X-rays.

Evidence from the Spitzer Telescope originally suggested that the pillars in M16 may be threatened by a "past supernova". Hot gas observed by Spitzer in 2007 suggested they were already – likely – being disturbed by a supernova that exploded 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Due to the distance the main blast of light would have reached Earth for a brief time 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. A more slowly moving, theorized, shock wave would have taken a few thousand years to move through the nebula and would have blown away the delicate pillars. However, in 2014 the pillars were imaged a second time by Hubble, in both visible light and infrared light. The images being 20 years later provided a new, detailed account of the rate of evaporation occurring within the pillars. No supernova is evidenced within them, and it is estimated in some form they still exist – and will appear for at least 100,000 more years."

 

About the Project

 

I don't know about you, but Messier 16 - The Eagle Nebula is one of my Favorite objects in the sky. I think it started when I first saw the "Pillars of Creation" shot by the Hubble Space Telescope back in 1995.

 

www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-pillars-of-creation

 

That incredible image impressed me for a long time, so when I first started my astrophotographic journey 2019, it was one of the first targets I went after. It was a pretty crude image but I could see the "eagle" so I was pretty happy with it. Last summer I revisited M16, capturing images over two nights (a first for me at the time) and I processed it with Pixinsight - which I was just learning - and got a results that was a distinct improvement. At the time - a One-Shot-Color Camera was what I had, so no Hubble Palette for me. I upped my game by gathering more subs and experimented with more sophisticated processing techniques.

 

This Year's Capture

 

But this year - I was really psyched to try m16 for a third time. This time I had a telescope platform with a slightly longer focal length and I had a brand new ASI 2600MM-Pro Mono setup - so for the first time, I would be able to shoot with Narrowband and use the Hubble Palette to render the image in away similar to seen in that first Hubble image.

 

Then we hit Rochester's Monsoon Season of 2021……

 

I began this project back on the Fourth of July and took a 2.5 hours of subs before having to shut down. Given my site's tree line, I only have about a 3 hour window where I can shoot any given target. With some luck, 3 or 4 more nights should do it and I would have - I hoped - a wonderful image.

 

Since then I have set my gear up twice to try and capture more subs, only to be shutdown by the clouds. Finally - on Wednesday the 14th, ClearOutside suggested I had an opening. Gary Optiz - who is not only an accomplished astrophotographer but also a real weather wiz, warned me that we would be in the smoke plume from the forest fires out west and that would certainly impact imaging. The Moon was also up as well, but not too bad yet. This would be about my last opportunity to shoot for this project this year, so I had to go for it. The captures seemed to go well but the sky transparency was very bad due to the smoke and because of the high humidity (dew was forming on the scope tubes and running off in streams!)

 

The Resulting Data

 

When I looked at the data the next day - I could see that I would have some processing challenges. First I had way fewer frames than I wanted (the story of my life!). When I scanned all of my frames with Blink I found about 25% of them had some evidence of very thin clouds passing through the frame. This would normally would cause me to cull these images before stacking - but I had so few frames this time - I was very reluctant to do so. I really fought hard for those frames and I wanted to get some value from them.

 

The Processing

 

The problem here is that the impacted images had very different gradients depending on when they were taken. This would cause what would look like a higher variance for a given pixel when sampled across the subs. This would raise havoc with the rejection algorithms and would cause the final pixel values to be off. I have been hearing about a new script in Pixinsight called NormaliseScaleGradients that does something kind of cool. After calibration and registration, you pick a reference frame and each sub is normalized to the gradient seen in THAT reference frame. This effectively removes arbitrary differences due to thin clouds, stray lights and such. Now that all of the subs look more similar - the rejection algorithms can work more effectively and the image integration can now use more subs - weighted by their noise profiles. This suggests that even pretty bad frames can add some useful data to the final integrated results.

 

So I keep most of the bad images in the mix, they had their gradients normalized, and they were included in the final master image, weighted by noisy they were compared to other images.

Anything that lets you keep hard-fought subs into the mix is my friend!

 

I also had a problem where the size of the stars were a function of when I took the images. Narrowband stars always look a little funky anyways- and this was certainly not going to help.

 

So processing took a lot of time. I was very careful to maximize what I could with deconvolution and I was also able to shrink some of the star sizes using the deconvolution function by taking the point spread function model created by PFSImage and trimming the outer edges a bit before application. I picked up this type from a video by Adam Bock and it did help shrink the images. But I still had mismatched between the filter channels so I spent a lot of time with star masks trying to help things out. And I did help things a bit - they were much better than when I started, but having said that - don't look to carefully at the stars in this image as they the are still a mess!

  

Capture Information

 

Lights Frames

• 18 x 300 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, Gain 100.0, Astronmiks 6nm Ha Filter

• 14 x 300 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, Gain 100.0, Astronmiks 6nm OIII Filter

• 15 x 300 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, Gain 100.0, Astronmiks 6nm SII Filter

• Total of 3.9 hours

 

Cal Frames

• 30 Darks at 300 seconds, bin 1x1, -15C, gain 100

• 25 Dark Flats at Flat exposure times, bin 1x1, -15C, gain 100

• Flats done separately for each evening to account for camera rotator variances:

○ 25 Ha Flats

○ 25 OIII Flats

○ 25 SII Flats

 

Capture Hardware

Scope: Astrophysics 130mm Starfire F/8.35 APO refractor

Guide Scope: Televue 76mm Doublet

Camera: ZWO AS2600mm-pro with ZWO 7x36 Filter wheel with ZWO LRGB filter set,

and Astronomiks 6nm Narrowband filter set

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2

Camera Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon

Mount: Ioptron CEM60

Polar Alignment: Polemaster camera

 

Software

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Pixinsight, Photoshop - assisted by Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, editor regret and much swearing…..

 

'While you were sleeping'

 

Abu Dhabi, 24th Jan 2013 at 7AM.

I specialize in aerial photography and spend a lot of time shooting subject from helicopters. One thing I miss about shooting from a moving aircraft however is stability. I love HDR photography and to shoot 5 or 7 bracketed exposures where the longest one can last several seconds or even minutes, you need a stable, solid platform. Your camera has to be fixed to a sturdy tripod - plain and simple.

This is why I always wanted to shoot from the roof of the World Trade Center Tower 1 in Abu Dhabi when it reached the 98th floor! From its peak, I could have a true bird's eye perspective of the town below without the drawbacks of the aircraft as a shooting platform. (ok, I guess I'm a bit spoiled, lol)

It took a long time to secure the permit to access the construction site and when I set the date to shoot the town, another rare thing happened; low rolling fog. Any cityscape photographer will be able to tell you that there is NOTHING as beautiful as the fog over the city in the early morning hours. What an incredible blessing and lucky it was to be shooting from the tallest floor in town, as the only photographer ever to be allowed on its roof on the morning with fog which happens once or twice a year at most!

I was so excited when I saw the view in front of me that I completely forgot to look at the platform I was standing on; a wooden scaffolding on the OUTSIDE of the building, over 330 meters high. I was too happy to shit myself from fear! I used Manfrotto Magic Arms to fix the camera onto the scaffolding handrail as the ledge I was standing on was only 30 cm wide and there was no space whatsoever to spread the tripod.

I quickly snapped 7 bracketed exposure to created a dynamically blended cityscape of Abu Dhabi.

I've won several photo competitions worldwide with this shot but to me, what matters the most is the thrill which goes into producing a single frame such as this one. The greatest reward I get from photography is a sense of satisfaction and self fulfillment.

 

Gear: Canon 5dmk2 and Canon TS-E 17mm f4.0L. This lens is quite possibly the best piece of glass you can buy for Canon or any other DSLR maker. Promote Remote Control was used for quick and painless exposure bracketing.

Software: I started in Lighroom 4.1 where I pre-processed the bracketed exposures and exported them as 16-bit TIFF files to Oloneo PhotoEngine for HDR tonemapping. Once I got my HDR base image, I exported it as a 16-bit TIFF image to Photoshop 5.1 where the real work begain. I'm using dynamic blending technique where various patches are applied across the image in order to 'normalize' the dynamic range of the image. I strive for a natural, if somewhat stylized look in my work. I most definitely dislike the cartoonish, flat looking and overcooked HDR images.

Primary grading was accomplished with Color Efex Pro and Nik Software Viveza 2. To sharpen the image, I use NIK Software Output Sharpener which I highly recommend. It does what it's supposed to do without degrading your image with nasty halos and excessive texture structuring.

 

First part of the almost 4 hours long capture. This one is covering about 2h 46minutes. Start time at 10:59 PDT and end at 13:45 PDT. The clouds were interrupting it several times . Some post processing will be needed to normalize the frames.

82 frame animation.

It will take some time while the file is loaded!

When opened in full screen mode the animation automatically loops endlessly.

Saint-Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint-Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents.

 

The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

 

The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul. The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк (Sanktpetersburk), emulating German Sankt Petersburg, and Сантпитербурх (Santpiterburkh), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh, as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург (Saint-Petersburg).

 

The historic architecture of Saint-Petersburg's city centre, mostly Baroque and Neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved; although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Here is the beautiful region around the Lagoon nebula embedded in the Mike Way near its core. I have seen it with my naked eye from the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, but this narrowband image is from my light polluted back yard in north central Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

 

The Lagoon Nebula (top center), approximately 4,100 light years from Earth, is a bright emission nebula in the constellation Sagittarius, spanning about 110 by 50 light-years. It appears as a glowing cloud of ionized hydrogen gas with a distinct hourglass shape at its core, where intense star formation occurs. The nebula contains dark Bok globules—dense clouds of gas and dust where new stars may form—and is illuminated by the hot, young O-type star 9 Sagittarii. Its bright core is visible to the naked eye under dark skies, with a reddish hue in photographs due to hydrogen-alpha emission.

 

The Lagoon Nebula was first recorded by Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna before 1654, who noted it as a nebulous object. Charles Messier included it in his catalog as M8 in 1764, describing it as a "nebula with a star." Its detailed structure was later revealed through telescopic observations and photography.

 

The Trifid Nebula, (left center), about 5,200 light years from Earth, is a striking combination of an emission nebula, a reflection nebula, and a dark nebula. It spans about 40 light-years and is named for its three-lobed appearance, caused by dark dust lanes (cataloged as Barnard 85) that divide the glowing gas. The emission nebula glows red due to ionized hydrogen, while the reflection nebula appears blue from scattered starlight. A prominent open cluster of young stars lies at its center, with the triple star system HD 164492 energizing the nebula.

 

Charles Messier discovered the Trifid Nebula in 1764, cataloging it as M20. Its intricate structure, particularly the dark lanes, became clearer with improved telescopes in the 19th century, and its full beauty was revealed through modern astrophotography.

 

I used my Takahashi Epsilon 160 ED telescope, Chroma 3 nm filters and a QHY600M camera on a Astro-Physics Mach 2 mount to make this image. It was built from 17 hr 40 min of narrowband data and 45 min of RGB data (primarily for star color) Collected over 7 nights in May, 2025. The image is displayed as HOO blended with SII over an RGB background with RGB stars. The fits files were pre-processed with WBPP in PixIsight using sky flats and darks and included Local Normalization and Drizzle (not yet implemented for this image, however). The RGB files were edge cropped, combined, plate solved, color balanced with SPCC, stars extracted, ArcSinh stretched and saved as a 16 bit TIFF for screening in Photoshop. The starless RGB file was GradientCorrected, and stretched with HistogramTransformation using auto ScreenTransferFunction setting. The narrow band files were edge cropped (alignment to RGB maintained), deconvolved (BlurX), stars extracted, GradientCorrected, stretched by HistogramTransformation from auto STF, intensity balanced with HDRMT and saved as 16 bit TIFF files.

 

The TIFF files were opened as layers in Photoshop and each layer converted to a group enabling independent adjustment layers such as curves, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast, luminosity masks, and a host of AI assisted tools like the Remove Tool for cleaning up residuals from star removal. The starless RGB layer was placed on the bottom of the stack and served as a fill in a BlendIF mode, the RGB stars were put on top, and the narrowband layers were sandwiched in between. All but the bottom layer were set to Screen Blend Mode. Levels adjustment layers were used to set the black, white, and midpoint levels of each layer. Hue/Saturation was used to colorize the narrowband layers. I like using Photoshop for the final tasks in constructing an image since it provides very fine control and non-destructive editing in real time. PixInsight is by far my choice for calibrating, integrating, RGB channel combination, gradient correction, sharpening, stretching, plate solving, and noise reduction.

  

RPO_Epsilon_M8_HOOS_RGBStars_18hrs_250530_RQFugate_Rev3_6400

marrit with inti.

paris.20

 

kiev.88

analog.

 

maneesh de moor . madre de la selva

 

.

 

INSTAGRAM

This view to the eyes and the chirping of birds in the background is indeed a therapy in itself... IMO, if that doesn't normalize your heart rate and blood pressure, then something is surely not right with you!

 

Hardly find time with my camera these days. Couldn't resist grabbing it with me while I took some visiting relatives for a stroll at Longwood Gardens.

h + chi, the famous double cluster in the constellation Perseus. The object was already know to the greek astronomer Hipparchus 130 B.C.

 

Object: h + chi Persei (NGC 869 + NGC 884, Perseus Double Cluster)

Optics: GSO Newton 8" F4 + GPU

Mount: Celestron CGEM

Camera: ZWO ASI 1600MMC @-20°C, Gain=75, Offset=15

Filter: ZWO EFW 7x36mm, ZWO 36mm Filters

Exposure: total ~1h, R 40x30sec, G 40x30sec, B 40x30sec, L (mixed from RGB), 200 Bias, 40 Darks, 40 Flats per channel

Date: 2017-10-16

Location: Schwaig

Capture: Sequence Generator Pro

Guiding: Off-Axis, ASI120MM, PHD2

Image Acquisition: Stephan Schurig

Image Processing: Stephan Schurig

AstroPixelProcessor 1.070: Calibration, Registration, Normalization, Integration, Channel Combination, Background Flattening & Calibration, Star Colors Correction, Auto Digital Development

Photoshop 20.0.1: Levels, Curves, Exposure (Gamma, Offset, Exposure), Masked Nik Dfine 2 Denoise, Masked Dynamic (Dynamic, Saturation), Star Shrink, Masked HighPass Sharpening, Levels

Darwin Jingili Water Gardens Day 3-4

 

After 3 three days of enacting a forced repetitive activity, I am starting to feel obsessive. I have a clear mind, however, I am annoyed by not being able to achieve other to-do duties of the day. Not that walking through Jingili Water Gardens is overbearing. I am finding it pleasurable. The oxygen is clean, birds are singing, people are greeting and the temperature is wonderful. What I am finding obsessive is that writing a reflection is time-consuming. So to alleviate this pressure I am restricting my reflection from a daily event to incorporating two days of walking through Jingili Water Gardens into one reflection.

 

Do I feel driven to engage in one reflection per activity? Yes.

Do I feel anxiety and guilt for not achieving my goal? Yes.

Did I underestimate the commitment? Yes.

 

In three days I lost control of my task and had to reprocess how I am to achieve purpose without re-purposing or letting go. My holiday intention was to not 'just do it' with the purpose of performing an activity that bridges yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That is a bridge I have identified to assist in gaining creative insight.

 

In regards to simultaneously observing my thinking and my thoughts about my thinking, I have realized a subset that underlies my problem. My day three and four walks around Jingili Water Gardens were more or less the same, however not exactly the same. The people involved are becoming real. Certain people appear at the same location every second day. Others appeared further along or behind their point of interaction. I even noted an individual's loop point. In each iteration, my behavior is normalizing. It is no longer a question on whether I say "good morning". It is now a question of whether I maintain expectations.

 

My Jingili Water Gardens walk now includes cognitive empathy. That is, I am thinking about my interaction and the third person's interaction. Does the push-bike rider evade me, or do I demonstrate prior evasion? Do I stand ground, step aside, smile, or frown based on their physical conveyance. Then once demonstrated, do we both accept the contract is as ongoing?

 

This cognitive realization gained by employing repetition, questions my good as well as the good of combined interaction and that of the third person initiative. Each small smile or frown can be quickly established as the norm, however, each interaction occurs in a slightly different place along the path. Does this mean that each interaction with the same person can be influence by where and when? Then if I alter my reaction to each location am I distorting my emotional empathy to confuse the comforts of repetition? Do I maintain consistency for the satisfaction of sameness disregarding the actual difference?

 

My thoughts are now questioning the identification of purpose. If I ignore the interactions I ignore my intention of gaining understanding through repetitive activity. Are fleeting interactions as important as the actual length and time of walk? Likewise, are the inhabiting people of the tourist location as important as the UNESCO world heritage site? Underneath this reflection is whether my cognitive gain of completing an activity of the intended activity or is it the minor and fleeting people interactions within the activity, the gained merit?

 

Thinking about this problem could be part of the creative problem I started with. In short, my problem could be someone else's perspective. Rather than trying to solve my problem through my cognitive questioning, I should apply my interpretation of other people's thinking of me.

 

If I am to stay focussed on repetitive behaviors I may need to self-reflect as someone else rather than being self-focussed. This could be a formal way of letting myself into myself as a third person. Can I become inclusive of myself through a base of problem-solving myself? Constructing a user-friendly approach that pays attention to my cognitive misunderstandings and emotional positioning on the service/products that I create. That is collaborating with myself as a third person(s).

 

www.jjfbbennett.com/2020/07/darwin-jingili-water-gardens-...

Let’s believe the dialectical faith of wokeism (woke Marxism), let’s join their dialectical cult! Since society is full of injustice and inequality, let’s tear it down and rebuilt it into a communist utopia—let’s Build Back Better. Let’s awaken to a higher consciousness, let’s awaken to a critical consciousness (critical Marxism)—to negative thinking (capitalism is bad). You’re a racist (a capitalist). The system (capitalism) is systemically racist. Let’s awaken the inner activist, let’s awaken the communist revolutionary. What will all this evolve into? It will evolve into the abolishment of private property. Communism: you will own nothing and be happy. Communism: equality for all! Communism: it’s for the greater good! Communism: the ends justify the means: murder, starvation, and the gulags! Marxism causes tribalism and division, because it’s intolerant of everything it doesn’t like. Get your reeducation: diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion): a precursor to a Social Credit Score System. ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance): a Social Credit Score System for companies (Can anybody say: Bud Light!). The Green Transition: equality (poverty) for all! Climate communism: climate justice, climate equity, climate sustainability, climate lockdowns! Sustainability: the road to a good global citizen consciousness!

 

The fifth tenet of the Communist Manifesto: “Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.” Three cheers for central banking…not! Lenin: “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” Three cheers for fait money…not! Stakeholder Capitalism is Fascism. Why do you think the (WEF) World Economic Fascists like to talk about Stakeholder Capitalism? The Free Market is the enemy of Stakeholder Capitalism. Grover Cleveland: “Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.” Say what: corporate personhood? So, that’s nothing, the coming New World Order will obtain Beasthood—666 worship the Beast. The Metaverse Beastsystem: techno-spiritualism in which humanity will be free from the limitations of mind, body, and soul; a techno-spirit of oneness with the universe—universal collectivism: Mystery Babylon, Babylon the Great, and the Tower of Babel—antichristism.

 

Here is a report by Oxford University and Imperial College London for the UK Government:

 

Flying (page 6):

 

2020-2029: “All airports except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast close with transfers by rail.”

2030-2049: “All remaining airports close.”

 

Food (page 6):

 

2020-2029: “National consumption of beef and lamb drops by 50%, along with reduction in frozen ready meals and air-freighted food imports.”

2030-2049: “Beef and lamb phased out, along with all imports not transported by train; fertiliser use greatly reduced.”

 

Tacitus: “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.”

 

www.ukfires.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Absolute-Zero-...

 

The NWO commies at the United Nations have outlined an agenda to decriminalise ‘consensual sex’ between adults and minors in a report titled: “The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty.”

 

Principle 16-Consensual Sexual Conduct (page 22-23):

 

“Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.”

 

Mark my words: pedophilia will one day become normalized (a human right).

 

share-netinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/8-M...

 

2 Timothy 3:13 “Evil people and impostors will become worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

 

Daniel 11:36 “Then the king (the Antichrist) will do exactly as he pleases; he will exalt himself and magnify himself above every god and will speak astounding and disgusting things against the God of gods and he will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is determined [by God] will be done.”

 

I’m interested in the silent shutter for lunar and planetary images because eliminating mechanical shutter wear could free me to improve the quality of my images by taking many more frames and getting better lucky images for stacking when atmospheric seeing isn't at it’s best. Because the extra noise introduced by the electronic rolling shutter used for silent shutter images is far below the eight bit resolution offered by compressed images, I decided to compare the quality of processed images taken with the two techniques as well as the original images.

 

These images are from my first night out with the a6300 which was at prime focus on a Questar f15 1400/89mm telescope. Images were take at ISO 200 for 1/50 sec. I took about 40 images each with the mechanical shutter (with the electronic first curtain shutter option to minimize vibration) and with the fully electronic silent shutter. The quality of the images was auto graded and the best 8 were selected from each batch. Because of the wide, half degree, field of view atmospheric seeing can cause mirage like distortions of the Moon’s surface. This isn’t a problem for small area shots of the Moon or planetary images because of the smaller field of view. For full disk Moon images, the results of stacking are improved if each image is geometrically normalized before stacking. I use Nebulosity’s 8 parameter affine transformation. The cost of this is that each frame takes about one hour to align. This translates to a practical limit of 8 images for an overnight alignment run. Processing consisted of deconvolution and wavelet processing in Lynkeos to recover resolution lost to the atmosphere and diffraction in the small, 89mm objective, telescope. The exposure curves are then adjusted to enhance contrast and slightly boost saturation in Photoshop.

 

One way to see the quality of the low intensity data near the noise floor is to examine the terminator region. You can see detail extend into the dark part of the moon in the processed images. The post processing of the two images was similar, but not identical. As you can see in the raw images there were slight differences in exposure although the camera settings were the same except for the silent shutter setting. These may be because of the silent shutter or differences in transparency of the sky between the two sets of exposures.

 

My current thoughts on astrophotography with the a6300 so far are as follows.

 

Measurements that I’ve seen of the images of the electronic silent rolling shutter on the Sony a7 series cameras show about a stop of increase in noise at low ISO speed compared to the mechanical shutter.

 

For dim targets like DSOs where noise must be minimized and relatively few, long exposure, images are stacked - the mechanical shutter is clearly a win.

 

For small bright targets like planets where resolution must be maximized and cropped video is frequently used, the extra noise in video capture (or wide FOV silent shutter shots) isn’t an issue. Stacking more images can reduce noise and the video codecs don’t capture the full raw dynamic range in any case. Video (or silent shutter for the widest FOV) works well to capture the thousands of frames that are preferred, without mechanical wear on the shutter mechanism.

 

Full disk images of the moon are an in between case. The images are bright and the number that I stack is limited by the long processing time for the affine geometric normalization. I’d like to have more full disk images to choose from, without wearing out my mechanical shutter. From my results so far it seems that to see a difference that silent shutter makes in quality of the final result takes pixel peeping and may be mostly due to seeing and transparency variation.

A cable-stayed bridge has one or more towers (or pylons), from which cables support the bridge deck. A distinctive feature are the cables or stays, which run directly from the tower to the deck, normally forming a fan-like pattern or a series of parallel lines. This is in contrast to the modern suspension bridge, where the cables supporting the deck are suspended vertically from the main cable, anchored at both ends of the bridge and running between the towers. The cable-stayed bridge is optimal for spans longer than cantilever bridges and shorter than suspension bridges. This is the range within which cantilever bridges would rapidly grow heavier, and suspension bridge cabling would be more costly.

 

Cable-stayed bridges have been known since the 16th century and used widely since the 19th. Early examples often combined features from both the cable-stayed and suspension designs, including the Brooklyn Bridge. The design fell from favor through the 20th century as larger gaps were bridged using pure suspension designs, and shorter ones using various systems built of reinforced concrete. It once again rose to prominence in the later 20th century when the combination of new materials, larger construction machinery, and the need to replace older bridges all lowered the relative price of these designs.

 

The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

 

The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul. The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк (Sanktpetersburk), emulating German Sankt Petersburg, and Сантпитербурх (Santpiterburkh), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh, as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург (Saint-Petersburg).

Saint-Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint-Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents.

 

The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

 

The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul. The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк (Sanktpetersburk), emulating German Sankt Petersburg, and Сантпитербурх (Santpiterburkh), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh, as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург (Saint-Petersburg).

 

Palace Bridge (Dvortsoviy Most), a road- and foot-traffic bascule bridge, spans the Neva River in Saint Petersburg between Palace Square and Vasilievsky Island. Like every other Neva bridge (except for Big Obukhovsky Bridge), it is drawn by night, making foot travel between various parts of the city virtually impossible. The bascule span was designed by an American firm, the Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company, and built by the French firm Société de Construction des Batignolles between 1912 and 1916.

 

The total length of Palace Bridge is 260.1 metres, width is 27.8 metres. It is actually composed of five spans, the southernmost joining Palace Embankment between the Winter Palace and the Admiralty and leading to Palace Square.

The engine which opens up 700 ton of each bridge flights consists of motors, huge gears (some of which are still the original ones) and thousand-ton counterweights. The mechanism works reliably, but sometimes small incidents occur. In October 2002 one of the gear teeth broke off: consequently the drawing was halted in the middle, and ship passage was delayed.

I was at a bookstore yesterday, leafing through one photobook after another trying to learn something from the giants. It's a whole different kind of experience, holding a physical print in your hand, to the extent that you can almost touch the grains on the surface.

 

At the same time, I had a very 'normalizing' experience, in that in the film days, any noise you get on your shots was considered part of your work.

 

Now back to this shot. This is another one from the Hong Kong trip in the summer of 2011. Apart from the composition, there's not much to like, technique-wise. I basically let the camera decide how it wanted to capture the scene, which resulted in an extremely high ISO (for a 7D) while the shutter remained open for one quarter of a second.

 

I, however, decided to leave the noise produced in such a process. Now that I have been shooting for almost 2 years, I see a same image taken a while ago in a very different way (hence the title). What I mean is, some of the marvels that technology had allowed us may not always 'enhance' our photographic experience, either as a doer, or as a consumer.

SH2-119 Clamshell Nebula in false color palette HOO on 2026-07-08, is a large emission nebula spanning about 2 degrees in the constellation Cygnus. Located roughly 2,200 light-years away. It is illuminated and shaped by stellar winds from the bright supergiant star 68 Cygni

  

Gear:

• Mount: ZWO AM3

• Main Cam: ZWO ASI294MC Pro @ gain 120 and -10C

• Guide Cam: ZWO ASI662MC with ZWO 30mm f/4 scope

• Telescope: WO RedCat51 111 WIFD

• Filter: Antlia ALP-T Dual Narrowband 5nm Ha and Oiii

 

Acquisition:

• 71 180 sec subs - 3h 35m total

• Session: 2026-07-08

• Location: Houston Backyard ~ Bortle 8/9

 

Processing

• Pixinsight Auto DBE, BXT Correct, BXT, SXT, NXT

• Pixinsight split starless channels - DBXtract

• Pixinsight NXT if needed

• Pixinsight Statistical stretch

• Pixinsight Perfect Pallet Picker - HOO

• Pixinsight Narrowband Normalization HOO, Curves for contrast and color

• Pixinsight NB to RGB Stars Combination script w/ star stretch

• Pixinsight Stars Saturation Curves

• Photoshop ACR contrast, black point, clarity, de haze

• Photoshop Selective Colors, ACR, channel D&B to balance colors

• Photoshop Screen stars

• Photoshop Final curves, watermark

Translation loading...

Identifying...

DNA match found...

Password valid...

 

...Welcome, agent 5QrZ6-D112Gb.

Please deactivate your vehicle's SEASDReD drive to normalize its net composite mass-net composite space ratio. The hangar will be temporarily unshielded and accessible once the normalizing process is complete.

_________________________________________________________

One more pic, showing the vehicle's open cockpit. (The function isn't very smooth but it looks really cool IRL)

I have more pictures from other angles but unless anyone reeeeally wants me to upload them I won't.

 

It's good to be back. :D

  

Saint-Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint-Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents.

 

The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

 

The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul. The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк (Sanktpetersburk), emulating German Sankt Petersburg, and Сантпитербурх (Santpiterburkh), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh, as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург (Saint-Petersburg).

 

The historic architecture of Saint-Petersburg's city centre, mostly Baroque and Neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved; although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

This statue, called Herons (Volavky) by Jana Moravcová, is one of the few still left in Prague since normalization times in end of 60's and 70's, when communists came up with so called 4th percent rule - visual artists was forced to donate 4 % of their art for beautification of cities they lived in. Most of them prefer to choose themes which have no political association whatsoever so they could not be persecuted for how it look like, which makes it quite timeless today - as far as cities takes care of them.

"My Dear Lady Rebecca, I would give the Earth to kiss the lips that have kissed the Grand Duc de D'or Baleine!!"

 

"That is a secret piece of knowledge, Lord Hugh - which you must never divulge to a living soul! However, those lips are available to you - and to all men of substance - for a price!!"

 

The D'or Baleine visit has changed everything. We are besieged more than ever with enquiries from elderly rich males about The Salon - and applications from married aristocratic ladies to join The Sodality. That young fogey Lord Trembath had a point when he said that I had "normalized prostitution amongst women of the English Ruling Class."

 

Love and Kisses to All My Friends and Fans!

xxxxx

Lady Rebecca Georgina Arabella Lyndon

Duchess of Basingstoke

  

Nikon F80

AF Nikkor f1.8/50D

Agfaphoto Vista Plus 400

CineStill C-41

Plustek 8200i

 

I never got along with TLRs, even though I had very good results from my old Lubitel 2 and my early Yashica-Mat, I always felt queasy trying to focus and frame through their rectangular viewing screens and the shape and weight were somehow always putting me off.

 

So why did I buy this Flexaret you might ask. Well, having spent 8 years as a medical student in Prague throughout the '90s (a period when I was completely indifferent to photography) I recently came to realize that Czechoslovakia (as it was known back in the day) had a significant tradition in camera manufacture and the Flexaret series were probably the pinnacle of that industry. I also recently learned that one of the consequences of the Russian invasion in 1968 was the cessation of their production as the Soviets re-arranged czechoslovak industrial production as part of the "normalization" process. Nostalgia kicked in and I decided to buy one for old times' sake. I opted for the basic "Standard" model that lacks the frame counter and double exposure prevention mechanism which supposedly is the Achilles's heel of the Flexarets, the classic ruby semitransparent windows for frame counting off the film's backing paper at the back are more than enough. It's "windows" because the Flexaret comes with a small metallic film mask that allows you to shoot 6x4.5, so two different windows are necessary.

 

The camera sits somewhere inbetween the Lubitel and the Yashica-Mat in overall quality feel (but closer to the Japanese camera rather than the Soviet one as it is made of aluminium and not bakelite) and mine is in truly great condition even if it's an earlier model. It was supposedly CLA'd recently and it sure feels that way. I shot a test roll of expired Portra 160VC and images came out really great, the 4-element 3.5/80 Belar lens has a good reputation and it sure lived up to it. My major complaint has to do with the viewing screen which is rather dark and makes focusing somehow difficult in subdued light, even though it's classes above the one on the Lubitel and I survived that one, right? Another thing that needs attention when you first shoot with it, is the long excursion of the shutter button which together with the rather light construction makes it easy to get blurred images even at 1/60s if you're not careful. A soft shutter release button and a steady hand will surely correct this. Other than that, a very nice Eastern Bloc camera that doesn't really feel like one and shoots really good images if you get accustomed to its minor quirks.

Boeing 737-958ER W

El Al Israel Airlines

Cn.41555

 

A historic day for the UAE as the first EL AL aircraft LY971 a Boeing 737 is about to land at Abu Dhabi for talks to promote the peace agreement and normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

 

www.instagram.com/p/CEjZLfOhecR/?igshid=12wxamta9c8la

The alarm sounds at 4:30 am shows a hurry I'm preparing camera equipment and I took the usual camera bag I put on closet adjacent to the tripod as I prepared last night before bed.

 

Month of January Sunday morning I went out, not forgetting first heat before leaving the vehicle so that the engine can normalize. Complimentary snacks such as bread, beverages, candy, and certainly I always carry cigarettes. I aim now is to go to the village Temon, Trowulan district, Mojokerto regency, East Java, Indonesia.

 

Why I chose this area because I did not explore with the camera and there are many relics of the Majapahit kingdom such as temples. Arriving at the destination I pulled out a pack of cigarettes for a smoke break while enjoying the beautiful scenery. I setting camera first so if you find the right subject I can directly grab without having to miss a moment.

 

The photo I took was "Archway Bajang Queen" or "Temple Bajang Queen". Bajang gate Queen or also known as the Temple of Queen Bajang is a gate / relic temple in the village of Majapahit Temon, District Trowulan, Mojokerto, East Java, Indonesia. Bajang Ratu in Javanese language means the king or nobleman small (dwarf) and the meaning Bajang is single. Since the time the young king crowned and given the title Queen Bajang which means "Little King".

 

According to local legend believed as a child or a king known as King Jayanegara this fall and cause defects in the gate his body so given the title King of disability or Bajang Queen.

 

The building was probably built in the 14th century was one of the big arch in the heyday of the Majapahit. According to the Archeological Heritage Preservation Board Mojokerto, temple / gate serves as the entrance to the shrine to commemorate the death of King Jayanegara in Negarakertagama called "back to the world of Vishnu" in 1250 Saka (circa 1328 AD).

 

But actually before his death Jayanegara temple was used as a back door of the kingdom. This assumption is supported by the relief "Sri Tanjung" and wings arches symbolizes release and until now in this area has become a cultural Trowulan if required mourn the dead through the back door.

 

* * * Copyright ©

All of which include an image is copyrighted, with all rights reserved please do not use, copy or edit any images without written permission from me Shantyrof (the rightful owner). If you want to use these photos please contact my email address: santirof@yahoo.com

“The Snake Nebula” (Barnard 72) is our dark “S”-shaped friend just left of center and is located in the constellation Ophiuchus. Our snake’s neighboring inky splotches each has their own designation in the Barnard catalog (20th century astronomer E. E. Barnard’s catalog of 182 dark markings in the sky) and collectively they form a part of the much larger “Dark Horse Nebula,” which, to the naked eye under dark skies, takes on the appearance of a horse. These interstellar clouds of gas and dust obscure light from stars behind them, thus taking on this backlit appearance, as if resting atop a sea of stars. Relative to our vantage point on Earth, this view is looking toward the core of the Milky Way, hence the incredible density of stars.

 

What is particularly striking to me about these dark nebulae toward the heart of the Milky Way is their striking contrast with the density of stars at the heart of our galaxy—to me it almost looks like an undulating sea of stars—and I wanted to promote that in this image, so I went out of my way maintain and promote the light and glow of stars both resolved and too small to be resolved by my sensor, taking inspiration from the sort of light intensity you might see in a lovely, deep photography of the Milky Way.

 

Details: StellarVue SVX080T-35V with 0.8x reducer, ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro, Rainbow Astro RST-135E. 140x90s for about 3.5 hours of data. Calibrated with darks (optimized), flats, and bias. Edited in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop. Photographed on July 21, 2023, high in the Uinta Mountains, Utah, United States.

 

Commentary: Accomplishing the above was a bit of a tricky task, and I did a lot of experimentation with this image. Editing is a little tricky in a distinct way as you want to capture the stars in one image and the background stars/glow in another, and it becomes a pretty intricate balancing act of preserving noise (as all those little stars are represented at the scale of noise) and color when re-blending. And the general light levels make it a bit more challenging to re-blend bright stars and promote star color. I’ve improved the process with another image I have captured, and was tempted to re-visit this edit to impart small-scale improvements, but rather than be obsessive, I have just decided to share. This photograph sure is a delight whenever it comes up on my photo frame.

 

Editing: Primarily in PixInsight. Some very mild high cloud interference on a subset of session; integrated best frames for a master and used Normalize Scale Gradients script to mitigate. No Light gradient removal. SPCC for color calibration. For stars image used StarX (correct stars only with no reduction and tiny boost to halos; some spherical aberration on reducer), mild noise reduction with NoiseX (luminance mask), stretched and nudged saturation with GHS, small adjustments to color calibration with GHS and levels, and further refinement to color balance and noise. For “background” image applied color calibration, mild noise reduction (NoiseX, luminance mask), and removed stars with StarX. Stretched with GHS, color adjustments, and cleaned up some odds & ends in Adobe Photoshop. Re-imported to PixInsight, and removed stars from stars image with StarX. Iterated on applying the stars to the background stars/glow image and undoing, adjusting stretch and colors using GHS, curves, levels, and masks, until I found a happy balance (including adjustments to the stars layer as color blending was tricky). Other than a small curves adjustment, stars weren’t reduced, as they are essentially the star (heh) of the image alongside the dark nebula. Exported to Photoshop for final adjustment, cropping.

The hunger of Moloch, the god of child sacrifice, is never satisfied. Like the Mayan gods, he needs endless victims to devour. But who would sacrifice the children—the future? Planned Parenthood: the ones who also sell baby parts? Would this killing of the unborn be a modern-day sacrifice to Moloch? How about the sexual grooming of children? More woke sacrifices to Moloch? How about the slow normalizing of pedophilia? Is this the next sacrifice to Moloch? How about school books that depict pornographic sex acts between children and adults? Is this a type of sacrifice to Moloch? How about drag queen story hour in libraries? Is that also a sacrifice to Moloch? How about mother’s bringing their babies to watch drag queens dancing in a sexual manner? Could this be a sacrifice to Moloch? How about a drag queen shaking his booty in front of children, as parents give their children money to stuff in the grown man’s thong? Is this a sacrifice to Moloch too? How about allowing men/boys in the ladies/girls change rooms and washrooms? Is this also a sacrifice to Moloch? How about giving teenagers puberty blockers? Is this another sacrifice on the altar of Moloch? How about giving teenagers sex reassignment surgery? Is this yet another sacrifice to Moloch? Those who pervert the minds of children are evil and wicked! Common sense tells us that a child’s brain is not wired for this kind of sexual deviance. But as evil becomes more normalized, common sense goes out the window. The satanic hegelian dialectic continues to go round and round as society slowly goes down the toilet. The Bible is proved right again and again: people are sinners, and they follow the perversions of their evil/woke minds!

 

Life will continue to become less and less sacred until one day “being human” is considered a vile/useless thing. Eventually these hard-hearted people will sacrifice their humanity on the altar of transhumanism. They will count their freedom as nothing, happily embracing their enslavement. They will receive a 666-smartchip implant, and they will bring their children to get one too. In doing this they will reject their Creator, and their humanity, degrading themselves in the most despicable way. During this time, every kind of perversion and satanic ritual will be practiced in public. Transhumans will be controlled/programmed entities (zombies) who will bow down to worship Moloch—the Image of the Beast. The people of the world will sacrifice their future to the Beast. They will be slaves of the Beast. But remember this: the Beast is never satisfied! He will devour all that you have, even your very soul.

 

Mark 8:36 “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nysadWvdTq8

 

This is a view of the Cygni Nebula (IC1318) taken with a dual narrowband filter and rendered with a HSO-like pallet using Narrow Band Normalization routine in Pixinsight. The bright blue star is gamma Cygnus (Satr) and the bluish open star cluster is NGC 6910. The Butterfly Nebula and Crescent Nebula are part of this large nebulous region.

 

The image was taken from the middle of Idaho Falls (Bortle 7) with a RASA 8 and ASI2600 MC Pro camera.

A leaf-mimicking katydid from Jatun Sacha reserve, Ecuador.

Several factors conspired on my trip to this reserve which led to more capture-releases, stressed animals and ultimately deaths than average. None of the following excuses are acceptable, but they are common, speak to a mindset, and a normalization of casualties ie. habituation. This is especially true in that grey area where research and photography overlap.

 

First was an abundance of arthropod life, much more than I had seen elsewhere, 2) the availability of research facilities and equipment like light traps which increased yields 1000 fold, 3) Wildlife found especially close to the cabins, allowing for assembly-lining of white background shots, therefore holding species for overly long as the queues began to back up, 4) The presence of other biologists which shared their subjects and thus increased the number of subjects (especially rare and interesting ones) still further. Essentially it was an oversupply, and I was too gluttonous too stop and consider. Rather than limiting the number and trying to photograph fewer and with better standards and care, I tried to do too much. This is a common theme, especially in insect, and reptile and amphibian photography, where both huge numbers and casualties (to a certain extent) are normal and treated cavalierly. When operating within this closed system, especially with others that bear the same mindset, it can become a negative cycle of reinforcement. Obviously I'm not proud of this behaviour, but it took retrospect to even see that what I was doing was wrong, and could and should be changed. I hope others can learn to question in the moment, and put aside their own personal wants as a photographer and prioritize the needs of the wildlife they photograph , as I failed to do in this instance.

 

-----------------

EE Legend

-Health injury/stress levels (scale 1-10-->☠️)

👣-Translocation

⏳-time in captivity

📷 - in situ - studio

🎨 - Use of cloning or extensive post processing

 

For those curious about the EE and scale you can refer to my earlier post tinyurl.com/y7vvoxv3

In God We Trust…buhahaha!

 

The cryptocracy (illuminati) are manipulating the minds of the masses. They use Revelation of the Method to program the group mind—the collective consciousness. Indeed, humanity must be prepared for the New Luciferian Age. They initiate you into group think—mass formation psychosis. It is a rite of passage in which you acceptance their plans for humanity. Welcome to the group! They use open and subliminal messages in order to condition society. They use their esoteric knowledge (the so-called deep secrets of Satan; Revelation 2:24 NIV) to move you toward their goals. They push society into every nook and cranny of immorality and filth. In the end this immorality dehumanizes society, thus breaking it down. They have dehumanized and killed millions of the unborn. In Canada they have been pushing Medically Assisted Suicides for ever expanding reasons, as they continually decrease the legal age and time limits. The value of life continually decreases. That’s why, when speaking about the (soon coming) Tribulation Period, the Bible says: “I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God.”

 

The transhumanist tiptoe, the luciferian tiptoe—both will come to fruition under the Antichrist. You will be able to become a super human (a god) when transhumanism is normalized and openly accepted. You will be able to openly live out your lusts when luciferianism is normalized and openly practiced. At that time ritualistic orgies, rape, and human sacrifice will be done out in the public square.

 

Revelation 9:21 “Furthermore, they did not repent of their murder, sorcery, sexual immorality, and theft.”

 

Many people will take the Mark of the Beast (like many took the jab), because they have been demoralized. This ritualistic programming leads the public down a predetermined road, with a predetermined outcome; this not only dehumanizes us, but it also demoralizes us. Demoralized people end up being weak cowards. These people try to stay center of the road, as the road moves farther and farther down the road of depravity. This means: center also moves farther down the road—dragging you along with it. These people try to be virtuously nonjudgmental, yet they are immoral. They won’t stand up and speak for the truth, because they might get called a bad name. They don’t want to sacrifice their comfort or reputation to fight for the truth.

 

James 4:17 “So then, if we do not do the good we know we should do, we are guilty of sin.”

 

All such people have been unknowingly programmed into these symbolic ritual ceremonies. Yes, indeed! Satan, through the esoteric cryptocracy, has planted his seed, and his harvest is soon ripe.

 

Matthew 13:25 “But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed WEEDS among the wheat, and went away.”

 

“We can differentiate between types of initiations in two ways: types and functions.”

 

This is one of the reasons for/functions of initiations:

 

“It reveals a world open to the trans-human, a world that, in our philosophical terminology, we should call transcendental.” (Wikipedia: Initiation; read what it says under the subtitle: Psychological)

 

One day you will be initiated (baptized) into transhumanism (the Beast—666).

 

When Jesus Christ returns, He will say, “Collect the WEEDS and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”

 

BTW Covid was an initiation into the Great Reset, and the Great Reset (Build Back Better) is a transitioning into the New World Order—2030: you’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy (Just think: a nuclear war would fast track their Great Reset agenda). Do you see how covid has charged society thus far? The authoritarian tiptoe! Look at what’s currently happening in China. Do you get it? Do you choose to see it, or do you turn a blind eye and willfully fall into the trap of ritualistic cognitive dissonance (evil)?

 

Evil gains more of a foothold as wickedness increases, thus normalizing it.

 

Truth and freedom go hand in hand: if you lose one, you lose the other.

 

Authoritarianism thrives on lies and control.

 

If we trust in God, we will walk in His light.

 

John 8:12 “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world! The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

 

In God we trust?

 

Well THAT Year Didn't Go As Planned - Sending good thoughts to everyone on this New Year’s Eve. Here’s to better things in 2021, even if they take a while to normalize.

 

(Original post located at www.pmkelly.com/2020/12/well-that-year-didnt-go-as-planned/)

SIMPLE = T / file does conform to FITS standard

BITPIX = -32 / number of bits per data pixel

NAXIS = 3 / number of data axes

NAXIS1 = 5025 / length of data axis 1

NAXIS2 = 3272 / length of data axis 2

NAXIS3 = 3 / length of data axis 3

EXTEND = T / FITS dataset may contain extensions

COMMENT FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format is defined in 'Astronomy

COMMENT and Astrophysics', volume 376, page 359; bibcode: 2001A&A...376..359H

MIPS-FHI= 0.348013 / Upper visualization cutoff

MIPS-FLO= 0 / Lower visualization cutoff

BZERO = 0 / offset data range to that of unsigned short

BSCALE = 1 / default scaling factor

DATE = '2023-07-12T14:14:50' / UTC date that FITS file was created

DATE-OBS= '2023-07-09T20:29:44' / YYYY-MM-DDThh🇲🇲ss observation start, UT

INSTRUME= 'Canon EOS 600D' / instrument name

OBSERVER= ' ' / observer name

TELESCOP= ' 6 inches newtonian lxd75 ' / telescope used to acquire this image

ROWORDER= 'BOTTOM-UP' / Order of the rows in image array

XPIXSZ = 4.29 / X pixel size microns

YPIXSZ = 4.29 / Y pixel size microns

XBINNING= 1 / Camera binning mode

YBINNING= 1 / Camera binning mode

FOCALLEN= 762mm / Camera focal length

CCD-TEMP= 0 / CCD temp in C

EXPTIME = 299 / Exposure time [s]

STACKCNT= 35 / Stack frames

LIVETIME= 10465 / Exposure time after deadtime correction

EXPSTART= 2.46014e+06 / Exposure start time (standard Julian date)

EXPEND = 2.46014e+06 / Exposure end time (standard Julian date)

ISOSPEED= 800 / ISO camera setting

HISTORY mean stacking with winsorized sigma clipping rejection (low=3.000 high=3

HISTORY .000), additive+scaling normalized input, normalized output, no image we

HISTORY ighting, equalized RGB

HISTORY Extraction du gradient (Correction : Subtraction)

HISTORY Neutralisation du fond du ciel

HISTORY Étalonnage des couleurs

HISTORY SCNR (type=neutre moyen, qté=1.00, préserve=true)

HISTORY Réduction de la trame (niveau=1.00)

HISTORY Transformation asinh : (stretch= 80.0, bp=0.00000)

HISTORY Transf. histogramme (mid=0.069, lo=0.120, hi=1.000)

HISTORY Transf. histogramme (mid=0.430, lo=0.038, hi=1.000)

HISTORY Débruitage NL-Bayes (mod=1.000, CC activée)

HISTORY Débruitage NL-Bayes (mod=1.000, VST activé))

END

Subtle differences in shades of green in this animation reflect vegetation conditions worldwide. High values of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI, represent dense green functioning vegetation, and low NDVI values represent sparse green vegetation or vegetation under stress from limiting conditions, such as drought. The still image is a snapshot of the Earth created from a year’s worth of data from April 2012 to April 2013.

 

The information was sent back to Earth from the Visible-Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership or Suomi NPP satellite, a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

 

Credit: NASA/NOAA

 

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/vegetation.html

 

NASA image use policy.

 

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

 

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Dinamarca - Copenhague - Ciudad libre de Christiania

 

***

 

ENGLISH

 

www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/culture/alternative-ch...

 

Freetown Christiania, also known as Christiania (Danish: Fristaden Christiania is a self-proclaimed autonomous anarchist district of about 850 to 1,000 residents, covering 34 hectares (84 acres) in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen. It was temporarily closed to residents in April 2011 by the Danish government, but later re-opened.

 

Christiania has been a source of controversy since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971. Its cannabis trade was tolerated by authorities until 2004. In the years following 2004, measures for normalizing the legal status of the community led to conflicts, police raids and negotiations.

 

Meditation and yoga have always been popular among the Christianites, and for many years Christiania had a theatrical group Solvognen, who, beyond their theatre performances, also staged many happenings in Copenhagen and throughout Sweden. Ludvigsen had always talked of the acceptance of drug-addicts who could no longer cope with regular society, and the spirit of that belief has still not diminished, even though many problems sprouted due to drug traffic and use (mostly of 'hard drugs', however, which are not tolerated in Christiania). These addicts enter and remain in Christiania and are considered just as integral to the Freetown ethics as the entrepreneurs. For this reason many Danes have seen Christiania as a successful social experiment. However, for years the legal status of the region has been in a limbo due to different Danish governments attempting to remove the Christianites. Such attempts at removal have all been unsuccessful so far.

 

Christiania is considered to be the fourth largest tourist attraction in Copenhagen (and it has half a million visitors annually)] and abroad it is a well-known "brand" for the supposedly progressive and liberated Danish lifestyle. Many Danish businesses and organizations also use Christiania as a show place for their foreign friends and guests. The purpose is to show something Danish that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

 

Famous for its main drag, known as Pusher Street, where hash and skunk weed were sold openly from permanent stands until 2004, it nevertheless does have rules forbidding 'hard drugs', such as cocaine, amphetamine, ecstasy and heroin. The hash commerce is controversial, but since the rules require a consensus they cannot be removed unless everybody agrees. Legalization of cannabis is one of the ideas of many of the citizens in Christiania. The region negotiated an arrangement with the Danish defense ministry (which still owns the land) in 1995. Since 1994, residents have paid taxes and fees for water, electricity, trash disposal, etc.

 

After bitter negotiations that temporarily resulted in the area being sealed off to the public, in June 2011, the residents of Christiania agreed to collectively set up a fund to formally purchase the land at below market prices. The community made its first payment in July 2012, officially becoming legal landowners.

 

***

 

ESPAÑOL

 

www.copenhague.es/que-ver/christiania/

 

La Ciudad libre de Christiania (Danés: Fristaden Christiania) es un barrio parcialmente autogobernado de unos 1000 residentes. Cubre un área de 34 hectáreas en el barrio de Christianshavn (puerto de Christian), en la capital de Dinamarca, Copenhague. Christiania se estableció con un estatus semilegal de comunidad de vecinos que se autoproclama independiente del Estado danés.

 

Christiania está organizada en torno a Pusher Street (La calle del Vendedor de Estupefacientes), calle, a tramos de asfalto, a tramos de adoquines, y a tramos sencillamente de tierra, en la que se encuentran algunos bares, tiendas, souvenires y centros culturales. Al salir de Pusher Street nos encontramos en un camino alrededor de un canal. Este caminito de tierra discurre entre las casas de los "christianitas", muchas de ellas personalizadas. Hay guarderías, puentes, y esculturas en el agua. Christiania es famosa porque en ella se permite el consumo y venta de drogas blandas. Por ello recibe el apelativo de "distrito verde" (green district). No obstante, desde 2004 el gobierno ha radicalizado su postura y se producen más redadas en la zona. Esto no impide que diariamente turistas y gente local transiten la zona para comprar marihuana o hachís, y que en los bares, terrazas y bancos se congregue la gente a fumar.1

 

El barrio de Christiania se ha convertido en interés turístico por el precio de las bebidas y alimentos (casi un 50% más baratos que en otras partes de la ciudad debido a que no hay impuestos), de sus tiendas de ropa, artesanía y recuerdos. En el pasado se podían contratar visitas guiadas por el barrio de Christiania, pero desde hace unos pocos años la comunidad decidió prohibirlas ya que se quejaban de que fueran expuestos o mostrados como si fueran animales en un zoológico. Igualmente puedes entrar al área sin problema por tu cuenta.

 

Al salir por la entrada principal de la ciudad de Christiania se puede leer «You're now entering the EU» (Está usted entrando en la Unión Europea), ya que los habitantes de Christiania no se consideran pertenecientes a la Unión Europea.

 

En septiembre de 1971 la historia de Christiania comienza con el derribo de una valla en un terreno militar abandonado por el ejército danés en 1971, por parte de unos padres que querían terrenos donde sus hijos pudiesen jugar. Luego de ese evento se plantea un debate en la comunidad gracias a un artículo en un periódico subcultural que plantea los diferentes usos que se podían dar al cuartel abandonado.​ El movimiento cultural y político incita a que el sitio debe ser el espacio para realizar las aspiraciones de vida comunal de su movimiento, logrando que un grupo de personas ocupen ilegalmente los terrenos y funden Christiania.​ El gobierno lo toleró, aunque ha intentado expulsarles de allí en numerosas ocasiones. En 1989 se promulgó la Ley de Christiania que transfiere parte de la supervisión del área de la municipalidad de Copenhague al estado danés, y que aceptó conservar el asentamiento supeditado a una futura legalización y normalización. Desde 2004 se dieron una serie de conflictos con el gobierno danés respecto a la propiedad de los terrenos y al mercado de drogas. En 2012 los habitantes de Christiania han reconsiderado su posición de ocupantes ilegales y han comprado gran parte de los terrenos del barrio con el propósito de mantenerlo comunal. La propiedad de estos terrenos no pertenece a personas individuales, sino al colectivo de Christiania, y no pueden venderse de manera individual. En caso de venta de casas o terrenos, las cláusulas estipulan obligaciones específicas entre el colectivo y el gobierno danés.​ Las personas que habitan las zonas que se han comprado pagan un alquiler comunitario que se estipula en función de las dimensiones de la casa. También pagan las facturas del agua y de la electricidad.

 

I continue my quest to normalize fat bodies on the beach.

 

Bathing suit - Accessorize

Sunglasses - Jag

Full Moon on May 29, 2026

Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello

 

A processing experiment with the Full Moon of May 29, 2026.

This image was obtained by composing two stacked panels of three images each, with a 127mm refractor + 2x (2280mm) and a DSLR.

On the left, the typical natural brightness. On the right, the normalized version with equalization.

  

The comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) has given us many incredible views in recent weeks, from Colombia we join these captures!

Images of the comet moving during the early mornings of December 4 to 8 when it was passing through the constellation of Boötes,

images taken from the Orion interstellar Camp in the Tatacoa desert.

Thanks to Jesus Mario Vargas Plaza for the images of day 5 and for all the support to capture this event.

 

Gear:

Canon 6D astromod with Astronomik MC clear filter

Lens Tamron 70-200 f/2.8

Tracking with Celestron Nexstar Mount

 

Images ranging fron 20 to 100 frames, 30s exposure ISO 3200 normalized and adjusted for brightness, software used: Pixinsght 1.8, Adobe Photoshop CC 2022

 

An almost perfect day to be outside in the spring sunshine. The only thing better would be to have no more COVID-19 and have the shelves stocked with toilet paper. I was thinking of resorting to the day of a good corn cobb wipe before I pay price gougers on eBay $85.00usd for four rolls of toilet paper. Sorry for standing on my "throne" and expressing my opinion. LOL!

Now let's get down to what we need to do. The quarantine has already separated everyone, and that means showing love to those we care about the most. The one thing that heals is a hug. WE have the power to kick this virus. This Good Friday, there will be a worldwide fast and prayer. All are invited to fast and pray on Good Friday, April 10, that the present pandemic may be controlled, caregivers protected, the economy strengthened and life normalized.”

Love to all! Stay Well! Hugs!

 

This wide-field image of the Lagoon Nebula (M8) uses a HOO palette applied with the Narrowband Normalization process in Pixinsight. The image includes the Triffid Nebula (M20) on the left, the star cluster M21 just above M20, the small star cluster and associated nebulosity, Bochum 14 located between M8 and M20, and the star cluster, NGC 6544 on the far right.

 

This image was obtained with a RASA 8, ASI2600 MC Pro camera, and IDAS NBZ II dual narrowband filter from the middle of Idaho Falls (Bortle 7). Because of the 43.5 degree N latitude of Idaho Falls and the configuration of the roll-off roof I was only able to image this location for 25 minutes. This image was compiled from 24, 60 sec. images and processed in Pixinsight and PS. It has been downsized from the original pixel dimensions of 5830 x 4030 pixels for posting.

My first RGB Image from the Qhyccd 183M 20mpx Back Illuminated ColdMOS Camera, I will be writing part 2 of the review soon, so here's what I hope is one of many images taken with this awesome camera

 

Gear:

Imaging Scope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 8" F4 Imaging Newtonian

Imaging Camera: Qhyccd 183M 20mpx ColdMOS Camera at -20C and DSO Gain

Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8 Pro

Guide Camera: Qhyccd QHY5L-II Mono

Guide Scope: Sky-Watcher 50x90 Finder Scope

Filter Wheel: Starlight Xpress Ltd 7x36mm EFW

Filters: Baader Planetarium 36mm RGB

Coma Corrector: Sky-Watcher Aplanatic Coma Corrector

Image Acquisition: Main Sequence Software SGPro

Image Processing: PixInsight

 

Image Details:

Target: IC434 - Horsehead Nebula

Constelation: Orion

Red: 19x300S

Green: 19x300S

Blue: 19x300S

Darks: 51x300S

Flats: 101

Bias: 251 converted to SuperBIAS and deducted from Flats

 

PixInsight Image processing workflow:

1. Calibrated against darks and Bias Subtracted Flats

2. Star Alignment

3. Least noise frame from each colour chosen as Normalization Frame and Dynamic Background Extraction Performed

4. Normalization of all frames

5. Stacking of frames and generation of drizle data (for larger quality image in future)

6. Performed LinearFit using Red stacked image as reference

7. Performed MultiMedianTransformation to reduce background noise

8. Performed SCNR to remove excessive green in image

9. Stretched the image using HistogramTransformation

10. Performed a CurvesTransformation to bring out the star colour

 

Right now I have not performed any Sharpening of the image, nor have I added the Ha data to this image, I'll post an updated image when I get round to doing that

A modernization of the Adventurers: Dino Island set 5920 "Island Racer", my very first Lego car set. Adventurers has long been one of my favorite themes for its period setting, and Sam Sinister’s "Island Racer" is one of my favorite sets in the theme. In this design homage, the form has been normalized to be closer to real-world styling of the era, with the inclusion of details such as bumpers, front cycle fenders, and a hood ornament.

 

More photos available in the build album. Many thanks to the Lego Car Blog for their post about this build!

 

©2020 Chris Elliott, All Rights Reserved.

 

Find me also on:

chriselliott.art | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit

Saint-Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint-Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents.

 

The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

 

The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul. The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк (Sanktpetersburk), emulating German Sankt Petersburg, and Сантпитербурх (Santpiterburkh), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh, as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург (Saint-Petersburg).

 

The historic architecture of Saint-Petersburg's city centre, mostly Baroque and Neoclassical buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been largely preserved; although a number of buildings were demolished after the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, during the Siege of Leningrad and in recent years. The oldest of the remaining building is a wooden house built for Peter I in 1703 on the shore of the Neva near Trinity Square. Since 1991 the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Simon Williams is the son of rich industrialist Sanford Williams, owner of Williams Innovations. Simon inherits the munitions factory after his father's death, but the company's profits fall due to its biggest competitor Tony Stark and his company Stark Industries.

 

On the advice of his brother Eric, Simon tries to embezzle funds from his company but is caught and incarcerated.

 

Simon blames Stark for this and accepts the proposition of master villain Baron Heinrich Zemo after the Enchantress pays his bail, as a pawn is required to infiltrate the Avengers.

 

The desperate Simon Williams agrees and is transformed into an ion-powered being with superhuman powers. His powers are tested, and he is shown to have great superhuman strength and durability, even defeating the Executioner.

 

Called Wonder Man by Zemo, he is then sent to meet and join the Avengers, with instructions to betray them at a critical moment so that Zemo's Masters of Evil can destroy the Avengers.

 

Zemo ensures Wonder Man's loyalty by advising him that as a result of the treatment his body now requires periodic doses of a serum to survive—a serum that only Zemo can provide. The Avengers are lured into a trap and captured.

 

The plan fails when Wonder Man decides to save the Avengers and aid them against Zemo, apparently at the cost of his own life. Hank Pym records Wonder Man's brain patterns in the hope that one day he can be revived.

 

Unbeknownst to the Avengers, Wonder Man's body has simply entered a catatonic state as it adjusts to the effects of the treatment. Eric Williams becomes distraught over the apparent death of his sibling and, blaming the Avengers, assumes the identity of the Grim Reaper in an effort to destroy them. The Grim Reaper steals Simon's body at one point, and attacks the Avengers three times before Wonder Man finally returns.

 

Wonder Man remains in suspended animation for years, and it is during this period that Ultron, the evil robot creation of Hank Pym, steals the brain patterns recorded by the Avengers for use as a template for the synthezoid Vision.

 

It is later revealed that Vision is built from the original Human Torch, an android created by Professor Phineas Horton.

 

During this vulnerable time, Wonder Man is used as a pawn on three occasions. Wonder Man is briefly revived by Kang the Conqueror to battle the Avengers as part of his Legion of the Unliving, and later "resurrected" as a zombie by Black Talon and the Grim Reaper to attack the Avengers once more.

 

On the final occasion, the Living Laser hypnotizes a now-awake but still very weak Wonder Man, in an unsuccessful attack on the Avengers.

 

After this encounter, Wonder Man was restored to true life and chooses to remain with the Avengers, aiding them against Attuma and Doctor Doom.

 

He also fought the Vision, and helped the Avengers battle Graviton. He soon after defeats the Grim Reaper, who was intent on destroying the Vision as he was "artificial" and a "mockery" of his brother; Wonder Man at this point is revealed to have become a being of ionic energy.

 

Wonder Man eventually joins the Avengers in a full-time capacity and becomes close friends with his teammate, the Beast. For several months after his resurrection, Wonder Man suffers from slight claustrophobia and a fear of dying in battle, as he did once before. Wonder Man finally overcomes his fear of death during the final battle with Korvac.

 

Wonder Man invaded his former plant which had been taken over by the Maggia, and fought Madame Masque and the Dreadnought.

 

Developing an interest in acting, Wonder Man stars in minor roles before moving to Hollywood, where fellow Avenger Hercules uses his contacts to establish Wonder Man's career. Wonder Man also works for a time as a stuntman, an ideal vocation since he is invulnerable to virtually all conventional weapons.

 

Wonder Man helps form the West Coast Avengers, and his new-found confidence begins to become arrogance. He develops a serious rivalry with Iron Man, but sees the error of his ways after a brutal battle with the Abomination.

 

He also foils Doctor Doom's plot to control the world. His acting career rises, and he is cast as the villain in the fourth film in the successful Arkon franchise.

 

Wonder Man eventually accepts the Vision as his "brother", but there is a setback when the Vision is dismantled and rebuilt as an emotionless machine by a global conglomerate.

 

The Scarlet Witch—the Vision's wife—asks Wonder Man to provide his brainwaves once again in order to rebuild the foundational personality matrix of the original Vision, but Wonder Man refuses, having feelings for her himself.

 

The Wasp further deduces that the Vision's original relationship to the Scarlet Witch may even have been predicated by Wonder Man's initial donation for the original personality matrix; at this, Wonder Man confirms that several of his hesitations about making the attempt arise from these doubts and the subconscious desire he's felt toward the Scarlet Witch since her separation from her husband. He is then ensorcelled by the Enchantress, and battles the Avengers.

 

Wonder Man battles old foes Goliath and the Enchantress, before meeting his would-be sidekick "Spider" and battling Gamma-Burn, resulting in wrecking his jet-pack.

 

Wonder Man then battles the assassin Splice for the first time. Wonder Man takes part in the Kree/Shi'ar War, and had his powers altered when he and the Vision failed to prevent the Shi'ar Nega-Bomb from detonating.

 

He battled Angkor, and then journeyed to Hades where he battled Mephisto, Blackheart, the Enchantress, and the Grim Reaper; he then learned that he was immortal.

 

When Avengers West Coast (renamed) disbands after a dispute, Wonder Man becomes a founding member of its successor group Force Works, but is disintegrated in an explosion during their first mission against the alien Kree.

 

Many months later, the Scarlet Witch accidentally resurrects Wonder Man in ionic form; while in this form he appears when she is in need.

 

Several months later, the Scarlet Witch is able to fully revive Wonder Man and he now exists in an independent, more human form. It is also discovered later that the Grim Reaper - dead at the time - is also revived.

 

Wonder Man becomes romantically involved with the Scarlet Witch, but ends their affair during the Kang Dynasty saga, due to her residual feelings for the Vision.

 

Wonder Man is blackmailed into working for S.H.I.E.L.D. during the Civil War storyline. Due to charges of misappropriation of funds in his non-profit organization, Wonder Man is pressured to work for the pro-registration side in the ensuing Civil War drama.

 

In addition to capturing renegade vigilantes and criminals, Wonder Man is instrumental in creating televised messages to educate the public and yet-unregistered superhumans about the specifics of the Registration Act. Wonder Man became a member of the Mighty Avengers.

 

Wonder Man began a romantic relationship with fellow Mighty Avenger Ms. Marvel warning her not to use her position as leader of the Avengers to keep him out of potentially dangerous situations just because of their relationship.

 

Following the events of the Secret Invasion, Norman Osborn created a new team of Avengers, effectively retiring Wonder Man during the Dark Reign storyline.

 

Wonder Man later appears on television, lamenting his tenure as an Avenger, claiming it was all a waste of time, and that using violence to uphold justice has caused nothing but heartache and death. He ends his speech by sadly admitting that having Osborn in charge is exactly what the country deserves.

 

After this, Wonder Man is imprisoned as a member of the new Lethal Legion. This group opposes the tyrannical efforts of Osborn; Wonder Man joins to try to keep them from hurting innocents.

 

Wonder Man has been seen alongside his old West Coast Avengers teammates, Ronin, Mockingbird, Tigra and War Machine in battle with a new version of Ultimo.

 

During the Heroic Age sequence, Simon is approached by Steve Rogers to join the new team of Avengers. Simon refuses stating that the Avengers have caused more problems than they have solved and implies as Rogers leaves that he will make sure his old allies realize the mistake they are making.

 

Simon also mentioned as having been in jail until Steve bailed him out. After learning that Rogers had disregarded his advice, Wonder Man attacks the new team causing some damage to their base before inexplicably disappearing.

 

Thor and Iron Man later contact him to try and reason with him, but Simon refuses to listen to their arguments, stating that the dead heroes that have resulted from the Avengers working together should be a clear sign that the concept is doomed, departing as Thor and Iron Man try to argue that all heroes are aware of the risks when they begin. Significantly, Iron Man notes that Simon is 'leaking' ionic energy, suggesting that his current mental condition may relate to his powers rather than being simply a matter of choice.

 

Wonder Man put together the Revengers, a team of super-powered people to stop the Avengers because he believes they do more harm than good, blaming the Avengers for Ultron's existence, the damage caused by the Scarlet Witch and the Hulk, the Civil War, and Osborn's Dark Avengers. His team subsequently defeats the New Avengers in a quick attack on the mansion before he moves on to attack Avengers Tower, stating that he will destroy the tower unless the Avengers immediately disband.

 

Although Iron Man manages to trap him in a prison specifically designed to contain his ionic energy with the Revengers being quickly defeated by the combined Avengers teams, Wonder Man has still successfully managed to spread doubt among the population about the merits of the Avengers as a concept particularly since Captain Rogers has yet to officially rebuff any of his arguments, asking Beast to remember his words simultaneously reflecting that he may be able to see the Avengers from the outside as he has not been 'real' since his resurrection before he apparently disappears from his prison.

 

Wonder Man later reappears to Captain America (Steve Rogers), telling him that he feels sorry for his past actions and that he is trying to redeem himself. Before he can accept help from the Avengers, he is attacked by the Red Hulk. He managed to take him down and looks at Avengers Tower, claiming that he will "earn his way back". He later plays a pivotal role in rescuing the Wasp from the Microverse. After this, Wonder Man is shown celebrating Jan's return alongside the rest of the Avengers at Stark Tower.

 

At Wasp's urging, Simon later joins the Avengers Unity Squad. During conversations with Jan and Sunfire, he makes it clear has no intentions of fighting, and only wants to help use his PR skills to win over skeptical citizens. He and the Scarlet Witch rekindle their relationship. During the final confrontation with the Celestial Executioner, he allows Rogue to absorb him to give her the power to oppose the Celestial, but his essence remains in Rogue after Wanda expels the other absorbed powers from her, leaving Rogue with Simon's powers and once again unable to touch others.

 

During the AXIS events, Wonder Man's consciousness was still in Rogue at the time when the X-Men and the Avengers were inverted by an inversion spell. Rogue used Wonder Man's powers when helping the X-Men.

 

At the time when the Avengers Unity Squad traveled to Counter-Earth to find Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Rogue was captured by High Evolutionary's right-hand man Master Scientist who removed Wonder Man's consciousness from Rogue.

 

After Rogue was unable to see or hear Wonder Man, he was still in Rogue's mind. When Rogue kissed Deadpool, Wonder Man was freed from Rogue's body as the result of Deadpool's healing factor acting like a circuit breaker that enabled Wonder Man to escape from Rogue's body.

 

During the "Secret Empire" events, Wonder Man appears as a member of the Underground which is a resistance movement against Hydra ever since they took over the United States.

 

During the "Empyre" storyline, Wonder Man, Quicksilver, and Mockingbird deal with the Kree and the Skrull's fight with the Cotati near Navojoa. When Quicksilver is hit by special spheres fired by the Cotati magicians, Mockingbird and Wonder Man come to his aid and help the Kree and the Skrull turn the tide against the Cotati.

 

Powers and abilities

 

Simon Williams gained his superhuman powers due to chemical and radiation treatments with "ionic" energy by Baron Zemo, giving him superhuman strength, speed, stamina, durability, agility, and reflexes. While Zemo's initial aim is to use ionic energy treatments to make Wonder Man at least "the equal of any Avenger," his treatments surpassed his expectations and endowed Wonder Man with strength comparable to that of Thor.

 

Captain America once describes Wonder Man as having "Sentry-level" strength, though that is anecdotal rather than scientific. Zemo's treatments also grant Wonder Man virtual invulnerability, immortality, enhanced physicality likened to greater stamina, agility, speed, and instantaneous reflexes. Zemo also outfits Wonder Man with a rocket pack in his belt to achieve flight.

 

When the Scarlet Witch resurrected him Wonder Man was able to transform into a state of pure ionic energy at will and back again. Following his resurrection and metamorphosis, Wonder Man eventually relearned he is capable of true flight and energy projection. Due to his self-regenerating ionic energy, Simon has the ability to go without air, food, or water. His eyes also glow a bright red and he usually wears sunglasses to conceal the effect but Simon can normalize their appearance as well.

 

Before his "death" at the hands of the Kree, Wonder Man discovered new abilities. In his beginning years, Williams sometimes wore an ionic energy powered apparatus which allowed him simulated flight. Over the course of his career he would gain true flight without need of a thrust system.

 

Other abilities begotten from manipulating his own ion energies include emitting force or flame beams from his hands and eyes. Alternating his physical shape in undiscovered ways either changing his size (enabling him to grow taller than his adversary Goliath), morphing his hand into a sickle or transforming into a more demonic semblance.

 

Withholding the energy in hand to increase the impact force of his physical blows. He could potentially even give superpowers to non-powered individuals by imparting his ionic force onto them and can just as easily reabsorb it back into himself as this somewhat weakens his superhuman abilities.

 

Since his resurrection, he has rarely used most of these powers but can still shift between human and energy states at will.

 

Later, his ionic form has begun to "leak" energy, allowing Iron Man to track him by following his unique energy signature, the other heroes speculating that his condition is responsible for his currently unstable attitude and anger at the Avengers.

 

In later appearances he appears to have increased in strength and power, having also learned to teleport at will. He has done so several times in recent appearances; once being when he was detained by the Avengers after staging an attack on the mansion, and again while battling and easily winning against the Red Hulk.

 

Wonder Man has some limited effect on Electromagnetic phenomena as was explained to him by Hank and Nadia Pym, to that end he can absorb various forms of energy be it radiological, ionic, even anti-material in nature.

 

Simon is an exceptional hand-to-hand combatant, having received Avengers training in unarmed combat from Captain America. He has an advanced degree in electrical engineering, is an experienced stuntman, and a talented actor. He is also exceptionally wealthy, being the owner of his own private weapons company as well as a successful movie star.

 

⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽

_____________________________

A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.

 

Secret Identity: Simon Williams

 

Publisher: Marvel

 

First appearance: The Avengers #9 (October 1964)

 

Created by:

Stan Lee

Jack Kirby

Don Heck

Autumn (also known as fall in North American English) is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn marks the transition from summer into winter, usually in late September (northern hemisphere) or late March (southern hemisphere) when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier.

The word autumn comes from the Old French word autompne (automne in modern French), and was later normalized to the original Latin word autumnus.There are rare examples of its use as early as the 14th century, but it became common by the 16th century.

 

Before the 16th century, harvest was the term usually used to refer to the season. However as more people gradually moved from working the land to living in towns (especially those who could read and write, the only people whose use of language we now know), the word harvest lost its reference to the time of year and came to refer only to the actual activity of reaping, and fall, as well as autumn, began to replace it as a reference to the season.

  

Autumn's association with the transition from warm to cold weather, and its related status as the season of the primary harvest, has dominated its themes and popular images. In Western cultures, personifications of autumn are usually pretty, well-fed females adorned with fruits, vegetables and grains and wheat that ripen at this time. Most ancient cultures featured autumnal celebrations of the harvest, often the most important on their calendars. Still extant echoes of these celebrations are found in the mid-autumn Thanksgiving holiday of the United States, and the Jewish Sukkot holiday with its roots as a full moon harvest festival of "tabernacles" (huts wherein the harvest was processed and which later gained religious significance). There are also the many North American Indian festivals tied to harvest of autumnally ripe foods gathered in the wild, the Chinese Mid-Autumn or Moon festival, and many others. The predominant mood of these autumnal celebrations is a gladness for the fruits of the earth mixed with a certain melancholy linked to the imminent arrival of harsh weather.

It's been a couple of years since I posted any photos from Vancouvers drug use mayhem.

 

2 of 2 from Chinatown.

 

There is an article by Vancouver Sun Reporter Peter McMartin about the situation posted in August 2025.

 

Every time I visit Chinatown and the downtown east side (daily) his article comes to mind so this is a way to share his viewpoint that I agree with.

 

In the 30+ years I have lived nearby, the situation has only deteriorated.

 

The law protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair

 

Pete McMartin: I'm tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse.

  

Published Aug 03, 2025

  

In 2014, Vancouver Sun reporter Lori Culbert and I wrote a weeklong series of stories identifying the government social welfare programs — and their cost to taxpayers — in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

 

Over 100 programs existed just for housing. Thirty provided health care, 30 offered family services and a miscellany of another 100 services — including a food bank for pets — brought the total to 260 social welfare agencies operating solely within the eight square blocks of the DTES.

 

Those 260 programs served just 6,500 clients.

 

Five years earlier, in 2009, Province reporter David Carrigg also did a survey of the programs available in the DTES, and he identified 174 social welfare agencies offering services to about 5,000 clients.

 

In other words, in the five years between Carrigg’s survey and Culbert’s and mine, not only had the number of people needing help grown but so had the number of agencies serving them.

 

And the cost to taxpayers?

 

Over $360 million annually.

 

Article content

That astounding figure — almost a million dollars a day — did little to satisfy the DTES’s voracious appetite for tax dollars. More to the point, it did nothing to eradicate the misery and living conditions of the people who lived there.

 

Rather than winning the war on poverty — and what a quaint phrase that seems now — governments engineered a truce, with the unstated understanding that if they couldn’t solve the problem or spend their way out of it, they could contain it. Those 260 social service bureaucracies weren’t solutions to an intractable problem; they were barricades. They ghettoized their impoverished clientele by concentrating the services on which they depended.

 

And let’s be honest: The public was complicit in this, and content for it to continue as long as the misery stayed confined within the borders of the DTES.

 

And yet here we are. The squalor spreads. It corrodes a once-vibrant downtown core. It infiltrates the suburbs. Daily acts of random violence and vandalism have become normalized, while a cornucopia of drugs — some decriminalized, some tolerated, many deadly — act as accelerants.

 

In 2016, a year after our survey, provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Act due to the alarming rise in opioid-related overdose deaths. Since then, over 16,000 people have died from those opioids. That’s not progress. It’s a plague.

 

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has worked. Over the decades, the problem has been studied to death — admittedly, a poor choice of words — with consultants and academics and the legions of poverty industry advocates offering up solutions that ultimately fail. They fail because they’re predicated on two simple criteria:

 

1. Give us more money.

 

2. Give us more of everything — housing, hospital beds, food banks, drugs, injection sites, counselling or — and this is always implicit — empathy, with a side order of collective guilt.

 

I’ve seen this in my own newspaper.

 

In one recent opinion piece, the author laments that it has been the public’s and governments’ norm “to daily bypass our downtrodden, our homeless, our addicted or mentally ill on the street as though they are either invisible or merely equivalent to lampposts” — to which I have to reply: ‘Are you f—ng kidding me?’

 

The public and its governments have done exactly the opposite and, short of bathing their feet with Christ-like piety, have directed billions of tax dollars not only to ease the suffering of the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill, but also to make them completely dependent upon those dollars.

 

Another Sun story — this one again by Culbert — examined the merits of involuntary care through the experiences of three addicts who underwent the process, and while two saw it as beneficial and helped them get clean, the third condemned it as “dehumanizing” and a cause of her PTSD. Though she no longer does drugs, she said that if she relapses she would prefer to take her chances with street drugs that could possibly kill her rather than be readmitted to hospital against her will.

  

Well, OK, I thought, ‘You’re an adult. Good for you for having the honesty to express that choice, however idiotic I may find it.’

 

But what I thought was missing in her testimonial was (a) any appreciation of the monumentally expensive efforts governments and the public had tried to make on her behalf, however ill-informed she may have believed those attempts to be, and (b) her failure to recognize the destructive effects that a relapse would have not just on her own health and family, but, more importantly, also on the collective health of the public, who would be asked to offer up yet more money, and deal yet again with her relapse — providing she survives it.

 

Finally, in The Sun, there was another column, this one by Sam Sullivan, who wrote that, after 52 years, it was time to end the DTES “experiment” and the restrictive housing policies that he believes led to the homelessness and violence bedevilling it.

 

Funny thing about that.

 

Between 1993 and 2005, Sullivan was a Vancouver city councillor, and for three years after that, he was mayor. Yet despite the fact that his 15-year tenure at city hall placed him in the midst of that DTES experiment, if not close to its helm, it is only now, 20 years later, that he publicly declares the experiment to be a failure, and — as far as I could tell from reading his opinion piece — without taking any responsibility for it.

 

I will refrain here, in my own column, from claiming to speak for the public or with any inkling of what popular sentiment might be.

 

But this is how I feel:

 

My patience is Exhausted.

  

I’m tired of the endless, self-regenerating calls for more studies and more funding when all I see is a colossal waste of money and effort leading to no improvement. I’m tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse. I’m tired of civil rights that supersede my own, and treat the right to defecate in the streets with greater regard than my right to be offended by it.

 

Finally, I’m tired of a social welfare system that not only encourages dependency, but refuses, out of moral timidity, to also admit its complicity in it, and which shies away from asking hard questions about personal responsibility and the consideration of measures more draconian than safe injection sites — measures like a return to complete drug criminalization, a higher threshold of minimum sentences for trafficking, the establishment of rehabilitation centres or work camps exclusively in wilderness areas far from the temptations of cities, the discontinuation of any efforts that facilitate drug use, and yes, the robust expansion of an involuntary care system.

 

It’s also my opinion that none of these measures, given the current legal climate, will become reality, at least for the foreseeable future. Under our Constitution and the Criminal Code, the law, in its majestic equality, protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair, and, as so often happens, bring about their own deaths.

 

How enlightened we have become! What progress we have made! We’ve reached that point when now sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing one’s daily bread are no longer evidence of a system’s failure.

 

They are the system.

Press L to view larger and on black!

 

So the story of my life today summed up quickly... Wake up, get ready, go to work, come home, surf the web, go biking, take a photo, get home, edit, post, write and probably after this go to sleep. Pretty much the gist of my weekends, since I normally work in the afternoons on weekdays I dont really go out for a bike ride since biking around these country side roads at night isn't the safest thing to do, especially since I surprisingly don't have a light on my bike.

 

Either way another simple photo of myself and my bike today. Seems like I always photography my road bike off road, probably because I think the roads look kind of boring and setting up a photo on the side of the road on my own looks pretty silly to those passing drivers. So can't say to much about this, went out to a field, did a panorama and got a second darker exposure for the sky and just blended the two layers together. Though I have to say I made the sky to dark in post but to late now hahaha I'm not a fan of reediting once its been posted. Hell even my sky tones look to saturated now that I look at it again. Remember folks taking breaks when you edit is important so your eyes can normalize again! What looked alright then might not look good 10min later. Regardless just a bunch of colour work as usual in post.

 

The title for this photo comes from a line in the song "Doing All Right" by Queen.

 

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Chego ao TOP 4 de 2018. A posição dessa foto explica-se pela pura emoção do momento.

Primeiro chego à bela praia de Buzios, RJ, no qual essa foto foi tirada, e me deparo com um bando de pequenas aves na zona banhada pelas brandas ondas.

Sem saber o que são, me aproximo cuidadosamente.

Uma surpresa, um bando de Batuíras!

Me deito sobre as pedras e mariscos cortantes, aproximo minha lente do chão, centímetros à separam das ondas.

Ali fico, deixo que as aves se acostumem com minha presença. Quando seu comportamento se normaliza me aproximo, me arrastando pelo substrato que cheira a mariscos frescos e mar, cada onda me cobre de algas e areia, que sensação, que prazer, as Batuíras me dão um show.

Nessa situação, nessa proximidade, fotografar uma dessas aves comendo enquanto uma abelha cruza sua visão é perto do ápice da recompensa de ser fotografo. Após o presente que essas aves me deram, saio do mar, coberto de alga, cheirando como um molusco, de alma completamente lavada e com o peito quente de emoção!

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I reach the TOP 4 of 2018. The position of this photo is explained by the pure thrill of the moment.

At first I arrive at this lovelyl beach in Buzios, RJ, in which i took this shot, and I come across a bunch of small birds in the zone bathed by the soft waves.

Without knowing what they are, I approach them carefully.

A surprise, a bunch of Semipalmated Plover!

I lie on the cutting stones and clams, draw my lens close to the floor, inches away from the waves.

There i stay, leting the birds become accustomed to my presence. When their behavior normalizes, I crawl along the substrate that smells of fresh seafood and sea, each wave covers me in seaweed and sand, what a sensation, what a thrill, the Plovers give me a show.

In this situation, this close, photographing one of these birds eating while a bee crosses its view is near the apex of the pleasure of being a photographer. After the present that these birds gave me, I leave the sea, covered in seaweed, smelling like a mollusk, with a soul completely clean and with a chest full of emotion!

 

Why To Fight Against Extreme Right and Nationalist Right In Portugal And In the World by Daniel Arrhakis

 

Why to fight against the movements of Extreme Right or Nationalist Right in Portugal and in the World.

 

It was the nationalist idealism that led to the Second World War and that divided nations leading to the destruction of many capitals in Europe and the death of more than 55 million people worldwide.

To these were added the millions of displaced persons, the thousands who were used as slaves in the war effort.

In these mortal victims are counted the entire families who were shot in mass graves (which they themselves dug) previously undressed and still with children in their arms!

It is the same Nationalism of an Extreme Right that killed millions by gas just because they were against their ideology, or because they were Jews, homosexuals, communists or gypsies. The same that Mr. Andre Ventura of the far-right Portuguese political party is chasing at the moment just because they are different!

 

As for the refugees, they come looking for a better life like so many Portuguese who are still in France today, some of whom are threatened in the same way by the French from the National Front of Marine Le Pen who do not want emigrants there! The same Marine Le pen who has a smiling lunch with André Ventura.

The dependent subsidies as André Ventura refers to and persecutes so much are people with poor resources, Portuguese people who, due to their low income, are given a subsidy, which social security does not provide without income verification!

This attempt to persecute the most needy, refugees and minorities is a technique used by the nationalist right such as Marine Le Pen in France, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Donald Trump in the United States that combine populism with [anti-immigrant] nativism and authoritarianism. They advocate worship / loyalty to leaders and belief-centered supremacy.

In fact, in addition to the trinity God, Fatherland and Family that was so homesick for Salazar, we always have a group where hatred is directed and the masses are incited; in Germany it fell mainly to the Jews and therefore to a religion, using a campaign of demonization that ended its persecution and death by chambers of gas.

 

The use of social networks made the spread of these ideas explosive because it managed to bring together minorities whose extremist ideals were not well accepted in the wider community.

The spread of false news and the appearance of propaganda agencies of the nationalist ideology and the radical right like Breitbart has aimed to discredit traditional news agencies and try to call into question even the democratic institutions and processes of the countries as happened with the Phenomenon Trump in the United States.

Doubt, the hate speech that is always present even with the normalization of insults is one of the techniques to radicalize people and bring more supporters to the cause.

This radicalization is also done with conspiracy theories widespread by people like Steve Bannon and lies where political concepts, tragedies or political crises and interracial or regional hatreds are mixed.

 

Let us not be naive Trump and Bolsonaro, Marine Le pen or Matteo Salvini who still recently supported André Ventura are part of a movement that tries at all costs to unite the Extremist and Nationalist Right in the World and in Europe.

With support from major dark European and American economic interests and support from Russian oligarchs, they try to divide Europe and its allies but also to weaken large alliances, especially the Atlantic Alliance.

The isolationist process is always present, hence the fight against international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization or the European Community. Through the process of propaganda of extremist ideas, fear and radicalization, they try to control the peoples and to endure an authoritarian system of worship for the leader, as we have in North Korea! - The radicalization of the Left is as dangerous as the radicalization of the Right.

 

André Ventura in his doctoral thesis defended minorities until recently and was against the police states to quickly join a nationalist right of Marine Le pen, whose father said that "The Nazi Holocaust was just a detail ..." .

 

I believe that many people due to the global crisis, the pandemic and the lack of social response by many governments see their future threatened and try to find alternatives. But let's face it, does everything work?

Will we want to agree with the fascism or the "patriotic" nationalist right of Trump or Bolsonaro?

Do we want national socialism like Hitler's Nazi regime? So since when are right-wing nationalism possible in Democracy or as History sadly taught us, we will be able to agree with regimes of inhuman fascism that defend the survival of the strongest and despise the most sacred Values ​​of Humanity!

 

Text By Daniel Arrhakis

  

________________________________________________

 

*** O Porquê de se lutar contra os movimentos de Extrema Direita ou de Direita Nacionalista em Portugal e no Mundo. ***

 

Foi o idealismo nacionalista que levou à Segunda Guerra Mundial e que dividiu nações levando à destruição de muitas capitais da Europa e à morte de mais de 55 milhões de pessoas por todo o Mundo.

A estes juntaram-se os milhões de deslocados, os milhares que foram utilizados como escravos no esforço de guerra.

Nessas vitimas mortais contam-se as famílias inteiras que foram fuziladas em valas comuns (que elas próprias escavavam) previamente despidas e ainda com crianças ao colo !

É o mesmo Nacionalismo de uma Extrema Direita que matou milhões pelo gas só porque eram contra a sua ideologia, ou porque eram judeus, homossexuais, comunistas ou ciganos. Os mesmos que o Sr. Andre Ventura do partido de direita radical CHEGA persegue neste momento só porque são diferentes !

Quanto aos refugiados vêm procurar uma melhor vida como tantos portugueses que estão ainda hoje em França, alguns dos quais ameaçados da mesma forma pelos franceses da Frente Nacional de Marine Le Pen que não querem lá emigrantes ! A mesma Marine Le pen que almoça sorridente com André Ventura.

Os subsidio dependentes como André Ventura refere e tanto persegue são pessoas com fracos recursos, Portugueses que devido aos fracos rendimentos lhes é atribuído um subsidio, aliás que a segurança social não atribui sem verificação de rendimentos !

Esta tentativa de perseguir os mais necessitados, os refugiados e as minorias é uma técnica usada pela direita nacionalista como Marine Le Pen na França, Viktor Orbán na Hungria e Donald Trump nos Estados Unidos que combinam populismo com nativismo [anti-imigrante] e autoritarismo. Defendem o culto/lealdade aos líderes e uma supremacia centrada na crença.

Aliás que para além do trinómio Deus, Pátria e Família que era tão saudoso do Salazar temos sempre um grupo para onde se dirige o ódio e se incitam as massas; na Alemanha calhou principalmente aos Judeus e portanto a uma religião, usando uma campanha de demonização que acabou com a sua perseguição e morte mas camaras de gas.

A utilização das redes sociais tornou explosiva a disseminação destas ideias pois conseguiu juntar minorias cujos ideais extremistas não eram bem aceites na comunidade em geral.

A disseminação das falsas noticias e do aparecimento de agencias de propaganda da ideologia nacionalista e da direita radical como Breitbart tem tido como objetivo a descredibilização das agencias noticiosas tradicionais e tentar colocar em causa até as instituições e os processos democráticos dos países como aconteceu com o Fenómeno Trump nos Estados Unidos.

A duvida, o discurso do ódio que está sempre presente até com a normalização dos insultos é uma das técnicas para radicalizar as pessoas e trazer mais apoiantes à causa.

Esta radicalização é também feita com teorias da conspiração muito difundidas por pessoas como Steve Bannon e mentiras onde se misturam conceitos politicos, tragédias ou se tira partido das crises politicas e dos ódios inter-raciais ou regionais.

 

Não sejamos ingénuos Trump e Bolsonaro, Marine Le pen ou Matteo Salvini que ainda recentemente apoiou André Ventura fazem parte de um movimento que tenta a todos o custo fazer uma união da Direita Extremista e Nacionalista no Mundo e na Europa. Com apoios de grandes interesse económicos europeus e americanos e do apoio de Oligarcas Russos tentam dividir a Europa e os seus aliados mas também enfraquecer as grandes alianças em especial a Aliança Atlântica.

O processo isolacionista está sempre presente, daí o combate ás organizações internacionais como as Nações Unidas, a Organização Mundial de Saúde ou a Comunidade Europeia. Pelo processo da propaganda das ideias extremistas, do medo e da radicalização tenta-se assim controlar os povos e fazer perdurar um sistema autoritário de culto ao líder, como temos aliás na Coreia do Norte ! - A radicalização da Esquerda é tão perigosa como a radicalização da Direita.

 

André Ventura na sua tese de doutoramento defendia até há bem pouco tempo as minorias e era contra os estados policiais para rapidamente se associar a uma direita nacionalista de Marine Le pen, cujo pai dizia que " O Holocausto Nazi era apenas um pormenor ... " .

 

Eu acredito que muitos em virtude da crise mundial, da pandemia e da falta da resposta social de muitos governos vejam o seu futuro ameaçado e tentem encontrar alternativas. Mas sejamos sinceros, será que tudo serve ?

Quereremos pactuar com o fascismo ou a direita nacionalista "patriótica" de Trump ou Bolsonaro ?

Queremos um nacional socialismo como o Regime Nazi de Hitler ? Então desde quando é que os nacionalismos de direita são possíveis em Democracia ou como a História tristemente nos ensinou, poderemos pactuar com regimes de um fascismo desumano que defende a sobrevivência dos mais fortes e despreza os mais sagrados Valores da Humanidade !

 

Texto De Daniel Arrhakis

Even though I'm not so sure how 33% of a bus stop shatters perfectly, it did make for a pretty cool pre-7am-photo-op.

 

Also?This is basically how my brain has felt over the past 72 hours...which is probably evidenced by how much I've been cooking and needed to keep moving/busy. Life, I'm ready for you to normalize.

Click on the shot to see it over black background !!!

 

The 9-shot cycle of the impressionistic approach captures actually came to an end and a new cycle begins that includes a series of shots devoted to one of the most picturesque cities of Central Macedonia ... Edessa !!!

 

In those recently captured series of shots, I actually tried to use all pieces of knowledge I have accumulated throughout my three years' experience, experimentation and personal reading on photography to produce the maximum possible result I can practically achieve, as far as both synthesis and photoshooting adjustments are concerned ... You will be the judges to that effort of mine ... The only thing that I can say is that I enjoyed it a lot !!!! It was a vist to one of the most beautiful cities of my country, under extremely "photographic" weather conditions (as you will soon find out) and I was trying to "squeeze" into my camera more and more of this amazingly beautiful landscape. This first shot seen above is a rather conventional one ... More beautiful, wild and less "formal" will follow, believe me ...

 

EXIF: NIKON D90 with Nikon Nikkor 18 - 55 lens, Shutter Speed priority (I was after the long exposure effect of the waterfall), f 22 (f value was chosen by D90 not so much in order to define the clarity of DOF but to normalize the exposure of the shot), ISO 200, focal length 18 mm, manual exposure selection, manually adjusted white balance, use of ND HOYA X2 filter, HDR made by only one original RAW shot with shutter speed 1/4 s, managing to accurately convey the scene's heavy cloudy atmospere's lighting conditions to the viewer, flash didn't go off, no tripod ....

At this point, I think Mr S actually started posing. Eventually, he settle in and we just enjoyed each other's company sitting quietly beside each other, me in my Rollator, and he on the ground. Shots of that coming soon....

 

Wilson's Snipe (Gallinago delicata), the male, I believe, of a pair that were visiting Teal Pond, Thomson Marsh, Kelowna, BC.

 

For portraits sittings, we hyoomins often check for the proverbial broccoli stuck in our teeth. Mr Snipe should perhaps have checked for a single dandelion seed. OR not! Perhaps it's his idea of a final touch when all dressed up! If you care to, you'll see the seed stuck with him pretty much throughout the entire shoot!

This image is about comparing Photoshop processing (my customary tool) of planetary data to PixInsight processing. This image, processed in PixInsight, is rendered from the same data as the Jupiter image processed in Photoshop and posted on 2022-09-02.

 

My impression of this image is that it is interesting, but not as sharp as the Photoshop-processed image. I will experiment with the order of processing to see if a better result can be optained.

 

After registration and stacking in Autostakkert and de-rotation in WINJUPOS, all follow on processing to this image was in PixInsight instead of Photoshop. In particular, Before any sharpening, I separately de-rotated all images for each color channel, and did a de-rotation of R/G/B Frames.

 

PixInsight processes used:

ChannelExtraction to pull out separate RGB channel images

LinearFit to normalize channel levels

ColorCombination to reassemble into a single RGB image

UnsharpMask for sharpening

CurvesTransformation for RGB, saturation and CIE c* component stretches