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Sky Candy Partita in the Stars

Charlie Martin | 10:48 AM on April 25, 2025
(Promotional image courtesy of Rafael and the Israeli Ministry of Defense.)

Welcome to Sky Candy. Today's soundtrack is Bach — I felt like it was a good week for something baroque. This is Bach's Partita in C minor (BWV 997) played on a really hairy-looking lute — all those strings!

The guitar is one of the many instruments that I tried and failed to learn to play. My thick, stubby fingers and lack of manual dexterity meant it pretty much stymied me. So looking at this instrument — a baroque lute, by the way — is just intimidating.

Prelude

Andrew McCarthy takes some wonderful astrophotographs, but John Kraus here has the eye of an artist. Frank Kelly Freas would have painted something like this.

Aurorae are amazing. The eye wants to make them into something like a physical curtain.

And they have such variety. The different colors come from the solar wind exciting different molecules in the upper atmosphere — reds and purples from nitrogen, reds come from oxygen as well, but the most common color is that vivid green.

The nitrogen glow happens when the stuff hitting the upper atmosphere is very energetic.

These pictures are great but imagine the same display in a clear sky.

Fugue

Our theme for this fugue is round stuff. Okay, I'm no Bach.

The Cocoon Nebula is, in astronomical terms, brand new.

It does puzzle me often where the names of nebulae come from. This little guy, I suppose, comes from the "head" off to the upper right.

This is also called the Veil Nebula. NASA here suggests the supernova that made it happened 5,000 to 8,000 years ago, while other sources put it between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. It wouldn't have been very bright from Earth.

…and now you see why we're getting such bright aurorae.

Sarabande

My younger readers — I do have younger readers, right? — may remember what we thought Mars was like before the first Mariner photographs in July 1965. I was almost 10, and I remember how disappointed I was that there were no canals and no Martians after having been inoculated with Heinlein during the preceding year. That was OMG 60 years ago. In the intervening years, Mars has become a place, a world.

Related: Sky Candy and the Globs of Mars

I still miss the Martians, though. I guess we'll have to be the Martians — that was what Ray Bradbury said.

This is the Sun in five or six billion years.

This picture could have been calculated to catch my attention.

Andromeda is our Milky Way's big sister, and always spectacular.

A "sarabande" is a slow, stately dance. This one is very slow.

Gigue

The sky from Earth can be pretty spectacular, too.

Imagine being there. A portal? An angel? Almost a shame it's "just" sun and snow.

And that's Sky Candy for another week. At my The Stars Our Destination Substack, there are daily posts of space and astronomy stuff. One of the themes I'm exploring is colonizing the Solar System — spoiler: I'm in favor. I did a longer article exploring a common objection to the idea of terraforming Mars, that the terraformed atmosphere would leak away. Have a look: Will a Terraformed Mars Leak? And come back next week for more Sky Candy. As always, I love your comments. 

Charlie Martin

Charlie Martin writes on science, health, culture, and technology for PJ Media. For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]

Read more by Charlie Martin
Category: COLUMNS
Tags: SPACE

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