Brad Snowder @Skywise@octodon.social

#Starlore Mensa – the table. Named after Table Mountain near Cape Town Africa. Part of the Large Magellanic Cloud edges across the boundary with Dorado. This has led to some to remark that Mensa resembles the real Table Mountain which is often capped by a cloud.

#Starlore Lyra – the lyre. Vega is the brightest star in the sky on summer nights. It has always been a favorite for astronomers to study because (unlike our sun) it is very young and very massive. About 12,000 years ago Vega was the north star.

#Starlore Lynx – the lynx. There is a quasar here (APM 08279+5255) whose appearance is being severely warped by gravitational lensing, the influence of an intervening foreground galaxy.

#Starlore Lupus, the wolf. A supernova appeared in Lupus in the year 1006. It is the brightest stellar event in recorded history. For a time it was 16 times brighter than the planet Venus in our sky, easily visible in daytime.

#Starlore Libra, the scales. The names of the two brightest stars Zubenelgenubi (southern claw) and Zubeneschamali (northern claw) date back to when this was part of the Scorpion, before the Romans gave him smaller claws and used these stars to create Libra.

#Starlore Lepus, the hare. The second brightest star in Lepus is named Nihal, which translates roughly to "happily drinking camels" in ancient Arabic.

#Starlore Leo Minor, the smaller lion. A Dutch school teacher named Hanny van Arkel discovered Hanny's Voorwerp, which is a quasar ionization echo. It's basically a giant intergalactic cloud of atoms being ionized by the energy of a quasar in a nearby galaxy.

#Starlore Leo, the lion. The stars of the head and front leg of the beast form a backwards question mark, a group unto itself known as The Sickle. Wolf 359 is a tiny red dwarf star 7.78 light years from Earth. It is only about 8% of the mass of our Sun, the minimum mass required for the core to generate nuclear energy.

#Starlore Lacerta, the lizard. EV Lacertae is a flare star, which occasionally grows in brightness for a few minutes due to intense magnetism erupting the outer atmosphere. To a much lesser extent flares from our own sun erupt sending plumes of plasma out into space.

"BIPARTISAN, BIPARTISAN" cried the losers.

#Starlore Indus, the indian. There is an irregular galaxy to be found here called IC-5152. It is 5.8 million light years away which is close in galactic terms but it is difficult to observe because of a single foreground star in our own galaxy blocking the view.

Let's all get "I voted" tattoos.

#Starlore Hydrus, the male water snake. This constellation has a claim to fame in that it gets mentioned by Herman Melville in the classic south sea adventure, Moby Dick. Beta Hydri is arguably the only bright star anywhere close to the south celestial pole.

Okay America. No more betting. Time to show your cards. #VOTE

#Starlore Hydra, the water snake. Alphard is the lonely bright star in Hydra. Its name means "The Solitary One." It is extremely young compared to our sun but it is mature for its age. That's because it has about three times the mass of our sun and it has used all that internal pressure to hurry along the stellar evolutionary process.

#Starlore Horologium, the clock. The Horologium Supercluster is one of the biggest architectural features in the universe. It is composed of more than 5,000 clusters of galaxies. That's more than 300,000 galaxies.

#Starlore Hercules, the hero. Look for M13 which is an excellent globular cluster. It's hundreds of thousands of ancient stars, all swirling around in a pool of their collective gravity. Sometimes it's called "Los Campos de Diamantes" (the fields of diamonds).

#Starlore Grus, the crane. The Spare Tyre Nebula (IC 5148) is in Grus. It's a planetary nebula, the thrown-off shell of gas of an aging dying star. A similar fate awaits our sun in a few billion years.

#Starlore Gemini, the twins. The Geminid meteor shower arrives each year around Dec 14. They tend to be slow moving and mostly yellow. The shower is unique in that it is caused by the debris of a passing asteroid (3200 Phaethon) as opposed to a comet.

New Cordata @Starbucks grand opening they gave me a hard plastic durable lid for my latte. I'm wondering do I keep it? Stick it in my pocket for next time? Then took a drink, lid came off, dumped Chestnut Praline in my lap & it occurred to me where y'all can stick your fancy lids.