Whats Cookin' Good Chookin

A Plutonian Landscape : This shadowy landscape of majestic mountains and icy plains stretches toward the horizon on a small, distant world. It was captured from a range of about 18,000 kilometers when New Horizons looked back toward Pluto, 15 minutes after the spacecraft’s closest approach on July 14. The dramatic, low-angle, near-twilight scene follows rugged mountains formally known as Norgay Montes from foreground left, and Hillary Montes along the horizon, giving way to smooth Sputnik Planum at right. Layers of Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere are also revealed in the backlit view. With a strangely familiar appearance, the frigid terrain likely includes ices of nitrogen and carbon monoxide with water-ice mountains rising up to 3,500 meters (11,000 feet). That’s comparable in height to the majestic mountains of planet Earth. The Plutonian landscape is 380 kilometers (230 miles) across. via NASA

A Colorful Quadrantid Meteor : Meteors can be colorful. While the human eye usually cannot discern many colors, cameras often can. Pictured is a Quadrantids meteor captured by camera over Missouri, USA, early this month that was not only impressively bright, but colorful. The radiant grit, likely cast off by asteroid 2003 EH1, blazed a path across Earth’s atmosphere. Colors in meteors usually originate from ionized elements released as the meteor disintegrates, with blue-green typically originating from magnesium, calcium radiating violet, and nickel glowing green. Red, however, typically originates from energized nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. This bright meteoric fireball was gone in a flash – less than a second – but it left a wind-blown ionization trail that remained visible for several minutes. via NASA

Colors of the Moon : What color is the Moon? It depends on the night. Outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray. Viewed from inside the Earth’s atmosphere, though, the moon can appear quite different. The featured image highlights a collection of apparent colors of the full moon documented by one astrophotographer over 10 years from different locations across Italy. A red or yellow colored moon usually indicates a moon seen near the horizon. There, some of the blue light has been scattered away by a long path through the Earth’s atmosphere, sometimes laden with fine dust. A blue-colored moon is more rare and can indicate a moon seen through an atmosphere carrying larger dust particles. What created the purple moon is unclear – it may be a combination of several effects. The last image captures the total lunar eclipse of 2018 July – where the moon, in Earth’s shadow, appeared a faint red – due to light refracted through air around the Earth. The next full moon will occur at the end of this month (moon-th) and is known in some cultures as the Beaver Moon. via NASA

rocky coast

Rosemary? You mean spicy pine needles?

Spectacled Weaver (Ploceus ocularis)

© Justin Goldberg

speaking of my highly specific 1970s cultural knowledge. people really liked this post on twitter

someone please protect me oh my god i can’t breathe

Rolinha-picui/Picui Ground-Dove 

Columbina picui