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5/3/2024

Starlight…

It's hard for me to wrap my head around meteorites. Unlike the tons of humanity's man-made trash that falls out of orbit and burns up in our atmosphere, meteorites are pieces of stone, iron, or a blend of both left over from the formation of our solar system some four and a half billion years ago. If that isn't enough, although most meteorites come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, some are formed out in the Kuiper belt. Pluto is in the very beginning of the K-belt (https://science.nasa.gov/resource/kuiper-belt-in-depth/) and they think the K-belt starts about 30 AU (astronomical units) from the Sun and goes maybe another 50 AUs. One AU = the distance from the Sun to Earth (~93 million miles), so…2.8-5.0 BILLION miles from here (https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/kuiper-belt/) What really blows me away, however, is that out of all of the unknown zillions of objects in the K-belt (or anywhere in space for that matter), what are the odds that one of them (either by itself or as a hitchhiker on a asteroid) will hit our atmosphere - and then does?

A little closer to home, this plant outside of the psychology building on my campus looks like a “shooting star" to me:

Close up picture of green plant outside with raindrops on it. There are green leaves starting on the left moving to the right to a cluster of six leaves.

And below is a “rising star”. Every now and then people come to the coffee shop I frequent to shoot films. They will often take several shots of the same scene and change clothing and shoot different scenes. I try to stay out of their way. On the occasion below, they arrived about the time I was leaving and after I sneaked by while the were reviewing their latest take, I took a quick unobtrusive photo, but got caught while taking the second one. The coffee shop entrance is to the left, behind the women in the yellow shirt in the first photo.

There is a woman with long black hair to the left of this picture looking at a group of three people looking at a camera.. one woman(on the left), a is holding a large round silver disc, a man is holding the small movie camera, and another woman is bending over looking at the camera. The scene is takend down a long alleyway with cars lining th right side.

There is a woman with long black hair to the left is gone in this picture. The group of three are now looking at me as I take the picture. The man has his left hand up with his first two fingers making a "V". The scene is takend down a long alleyway with cars lining th right side.

OCTOBER, p.g 2, p. 3, p. 4

NOVEMBER p.2, p.3, p.4 , p.5, p.6, p.7

DECEMBER p.2, p.3, p.4, p.5 p.6, p.7, p.8

JANUARY p.2, p.3

FEBRUARY, p.2, p.3, p.5,

MARCH p.2, p.3, p.4 p.5, p.6, p.7

APRIL p.2, p.3, p.4, p.5, p.6, p.7, p.8, p.9, p.10, p11

May, p.2, p.2b p.3, p.4, p5, p.6 p.7, p.8

June 24, p.2, p.3, p.5