Eclipsellium - Blog Posts
my cat has arrived to wish you luck on exams! you can do it :)
actually so upset that em dashes are being treated as an ai indicator— i love them ❤️
they’re so versatile and they look soooo prettyyyy too. i started using them after i read the great gatsby
it’s been a little over two years since i took a picture of ursa major while flying. it was a surreal experience and i lowkey want to travel again just so i can see that :)
really regret not getting my phone reflection out of it so if anyone has any tips to remove it i’d love to hear them!
SPRING IS HERE! 🌷💐🌸☀️
mental health, mood, weather, literally everything: 📈
my grades tho: 📉
RANT APPROACHING!!!! continue at your own risk ⚠️
OH MY GOD I CANNOT put into WORDS how UNEXPECTED this is. and your like… what? but an 87 isn’t even that bad???
look, i’ve been writing narrative and fiction since i could speak. i don’t normally ask for feedback, so maybe that’s a point of growth but oh well. i write multiple short stories every month and write a page of narrative in my journal EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
in school, we typically only write literary analysis or argumentative or like DBQ style. but i switched to a writing class this semester and my teacher told us to write a mock common app essay.
YOUD THINK that with ALL the narrative writing i’ve done and ALLL the summer program apps i’ve had to write in the past years, THIS WOULD BE A PIECE OF CAKE.
i will be honest, i did struggle with this a bit, but by the time we got to the peer review stage, my classmates jaws DROPPED and they were like ITS SO GOOD (not to be egotistic but just to give you some context for the level of writing i thought i had)
so IMAGINE MY FACE WHEN I SEE THIS. NO JOKE this is the LOWEST essay grade i’ve gotten in my ENTIRE academic career in the past EIGHT YEARS (i’m in high school btw)
and i loon at my class and im like no way im in the middle of the pack. like what about the kid who wrote about being a capitalist overlord in minecraft? or the basic one that talks about a sports injury??? and these are the people with brain cells. like what about the people that posted themselves buying alcohol for a party while they are underage onto insta??? like cmon no way their essays got perfect grades
and for reference she’s not that harsh a grader. my teacher is the most chill person. she hands out candy and actually got me to participate in class and doesn’t even care if you get your work done.
and so i check my document to see what feedback she left me. no joke the only comments are small grammar mistakes, some flow issues that she pointed out, and suggestions to elaborate. YOURE TELLING ME that the only thing wrong with my essay is that YOU WANTED MORE????? like make it make sense
worse thing is that i was planning to have her write my letter of recommendation, so at least i have an excuse to go talk to her??? but like i don’t want to be one of her B level writers
at one point the only thing i can imagine that was wrong with it was that it could be TOO creative or TOO emotional. so much for wanting to go outside the box and actually improve myself as a writer….
maybe i’m wrong but it feels kind of like an issue just with school in general. like maybe my school especially, since people are just obsessed with grades teachers expect the bare minimum, cookie cutter assignments. they don’t want you to expand on your thinking and it only matters if it’s going to be on test.
whatever. i’ll probably update the situation when i talk to my english teacher. thanks for listening to my minuscule problems 💕
nevermind i resolved it
I SWEAR IT WAS WORKING FIVE SECONDS AGO AAA
I SWEAR IT WAS WORKING FIVE SECONDS AGO AAA
i was just looking around the rate my professor for caltech… just for fun…
bro why does this fictional character have more ratings than any real faculty 😭 like most of them just have 1 or 2
should i give in to the hype and watch big bang theory???? 🤨
in my academic weapon era ✍️
physics feels so inaccessible.
like what do you mean the only information on this topic is a power point presentation from ten years ago with only half of the information on it?
or you tell me there's three ways to download the software i need for the calculations, but only one of the ways actually works and you don't even tell me how to do it!!!
never mind the sheer amount of prerequisites. i never struggled with math too much, but i also never took the opportunity to skip a level in math. when i was starting out, you can't do anything without trig. so then i went and learned trig on my own, but then i needed matrices. so i went and i learned matrices and vectors on my own, but now i need calculus. and holy shit is there a lot of stuff within calculus.
half the important papers are hidden behind paywalls and the diagrams are so confusing they take me forever to figure out. maybe i'm just inexperienced, but isn't the whole point of diagrams for the information to be more accessible?????
i might be wrong since i'm young and inexperienced, but it seems as if there's this tone of exclusivity in physics. why is it so hard to find mentors, and when i do, they have such trouble believing in me? i might be young, but i can still understand and help with something. why would you ignore all my emails and just tell me to take the easy way out? i'm in it for the long run.
We went to the local observatory tonight but when we got there, there was a HUGE line of people. Whoops. It’s was still really pretty and we got to see an amazing view of the stars.
These are my attempts to take a picture of the sky with my phone but they didn’t turn out very well. I don’t even remember what I was trying to photograph. Next time, I’ll try to bring an actual camera.
I think the brightest one in the left picture might be Jupiter???? lol 🥲
Thor's Helmet taken by Chris DeCosta and Martin Pugh on February 28 2019
NGC 2359, also referred to as Thor's Helmet, is an emission nebula in the constellation Canis Major. At the heart of this nebula is a Wolf-Rayet star WR7, which is in this phase briefly before a supernova occurs.
The bubble appearance of this nebula is due to the strong stellar winds coming from WR7. These winds contribute to forming a complex structure, with a huge mass of ionized material. The high energy radiation coming from the star ionizes hydrogen to produce red light and doubly ionizes oxygen to produce blue light.
The gas absorbs and then reemits this light, leading to the name of "emission nebula".
tonight’s setup 😊 hopefully I go to bed at a reasonable time. I still have TWO lab reports to finish though.
I thought my math homework was going to be chill because it was just two problems but tell me why I open it and it’s part a-p 😭
it’s a grey week so far— the kind where you can already smell the petrichor and the grass is damp with anticipation but there’s no droplets of rain when i look up at the sky
its an endless sea of fatigue. constant repetition of the same days and same assignments and same hopes and dreams. everyone expects every ounce of your energy or none at all— a limbo between pressure and vengeance
i’m trapped inside my own head, wishing for an alternate existence knowing i need to face the world. hopefully i get the courage soon
Star Trails taken by Rob on February 24 2024
Star trails are photographs taken over long exposures, where the rotation of the Earth causes the stars to appear as arcs in the sky instead of points. The Earth rotates around its axis every 23 hours and 56 minutes.
Typically, star trails are focused on Polaris in the northern hemisphere, but I found this photo unique because it opted for a different composition. It also really highlights how dense the sky is with stars.
It begs the question, why isn't the sky infinitely bright with infinite stars? This is actually the observation that helped cosmologists find theories for the age of the universe. For a young universe, not enough time has passed for the light from incredibly distant stars to reach us, leading to the dark sky we see when we look up at night.
Dolphin Head Nebula taken by Ben Brown on February 23 2024
The Dolphin Head Nebula, Sh 2-308, is an emission nebula caused by the Wolf-Rayet star EZ Canis Majoris. WR stars have completed fusion of hydrogen and are now fusing heavier elements such as helium and carbon. They have unique emission spectrums for this reason, with no hydrogen emission lines.
The temperature of WR stars is much higher than typical stars, reaching 20,000 K to 210,000 K. WR stars are some of the most luminous stars due to their high temperatures, but most of their output is in the ultraviolet spectrum, meaning we can't see it with the naked eye.
This UV radiation ionizes the gas around it, leading to the emission nebula you can see in the photograph.
#3. Keeping momentum
You are tired. You are lazy. You can't do anything. Those are the voices I hear, and you might hear, after a long day at school. All I want to do is lay down on the couch and take a nap or get lost scrolling on my phone. But I know if I do, I'm going to spend the next two hours doing absolutely nothing.
Try not to stop doing stuff when you have a break. And I don't mean you should be constantly working. Make yourself a cup of tea. Journal. Call your friend. Something that keeps your momentum. It's harder to stop when you're stationary compared to when you're already moving.
"Anything that is easy for me must be worthless." — Impostor syndrome in a nutshell
my new favorite poem ✨
The Large Magellanic Cloud taken by Rory Broesder on Februrary 18 2023
The LMC is a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, set to collide in 2.4 billion years. It is an easily observable object from the southern hemisphere and is the fourth brightest galaxy in the local group. Within this galaxy is the Tarantula Nebula, a very active star forming region.
It was once a barred spiral galaxy before it was disrupted through tidal interactions with the Milky Way galaxy and Small Magellanic Cloud. In fact, there is a bridge of hot gas showing the connection between the LMC and SMC which is also an active star forming region.
The LMC is one of around sixty other satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.
#2. Red light, Green light
More study tips! Separate your to-do list into three buckets: red light tasks, yellow light, and green light.
Red light tasks are the hardest things you have to do. Typically, there is some planning involved, different components, and it will take you multiple days to work on it. Think essay, presentation, big project.
This might come as a surprise but studying for hard tests I put in the yellow light category. (If you’re cramming put this in the red category, but pls don’t.) You are going to want to split up hefty homework assignments and big tests into smaller actionable pieces. The idea is to study a bit every day. The idea is that there is more flexibility and resources while you study, and each problem generally has a clear solution.
Green light is something like emails, routine Khan Academy practice, reading a chapter of a book, or small homework assignments. The point of my system is to be flexible and put things into categories based on how I’m feeling and how much time there is as well.
What this does is it reduces your to do list into three sections, makes a plan, and helps you quantify how urgent tasks are.
Here is my typical schedule for these tasks:
After school:
Break for 1hr
Green as a warmup
Yellow for one hour for 1-1.5hrs
Red after dinner for 2~hrs
Green until tired .5hrs
Weekends:
Finish ALL Green in the morning Sat
Red for 5~ hrs (or however much you need) Sat
Breaks interwoven between
Dinner and relaxing Sat evening
Yellow for 2-3~ hr Sun
Red for 1-1.5hr Sun evening
Day off where I wasted the entire morning:
Red for 2hrs
Yellow for 2hrs
After dinner do Green until tired
i went to the local library to pick up some books today :) i'm literally so dumb because i was in the wrong row for the nonfiction section (looking for spacefarers) and i did not even stop to question why all the books around me were on the culinary arts.
i heard the master of djinn is a really good book and would be good for people that liked arcane. IF I MAKE IT THROUGH THE BOOK, maybe i'll write a review. hopefully i can because it looks really interesting...
i have a lot of random stuff to do these next two days since i wasn't productive for the first three days of break :(
study for computer science midterm
calculus unit 4 problem sets
magnetostatics FRQ
read literature for research project
update astrophysics notes
work on cosmology simulation
Flame Nebula taken by Hubble Space Telescope
This nebula is an emission nebula— a star forming region in the Orion constellation. The nebula is filled with young stars; however, dense gas obscures the majority of the cluster.
In this cluster, it contains at least one O-type star that emits light, exciting the gas around it.
O-type stars are huge blue stars that are easily seen from Earth, even from farther distances. They have extremely high surface temperatures, causing them to lose energy at a much faster rate than other stars. These massive stars live for much smaller lifetimes, before resulting in supernova explosions and eventually forming a neutron star or black hole.
f=ma exam…. either i cooked or completely flunked lol
Vela Supernova Remnant taken on February 6 2021 by jeff2011 on Astrobin
The supernova remnant resides within the Vela constellation, having exploded over ten thousand years ago. It is the closes supernova remnant to Earth. Observational data from this remnant provided proof that supernova’s can produce neutron stars.
Supernovas occur at the end of a star’s life. Stars with mass over eight solar masses finish burning the hydrogen in their core and become a red supergiant. Successive fusion then occurs until the core contains iron. Fusion can no longer occur at iron since it is not energetically favorable. Gravity then takes over leading to a supernova explosion— expelling a huge amount of stellar material.
Neutron stars can form as a result of this, as protons and electrons collide to combine into neutrons. The neutron stars are stable by neutron degeneracy pressure. This pressure is caused the Pauli Exclusion principal which prevents neutrons from having the same positions.
The Soul Nebula taken by Kurt Wallberg on Februrary 1 2024
This image depicts The Soul Nebula (IC 1848) on the left and Westhout 5 (IC 1848) on the right. Westhout 5 is part of the bigger Soul Nebula. It’s an emission nebula— consisting of the star forming regions with ionized hydrogen gas and dark nebula. Dark nebulas are when the stellar medium is so dense that the light from objects behind it cannot pass through.
As you can see in the image, there are cavities in the gas. These were carved out by stars due to radiation and stellar winds. There is a theory of triggered star formation, which describes that these cavities compress the gas around it to trigger star formation. Images such as these have been used to help prove this theory, showing that the closer the star is to the cavity, the younger it is.
#1. NO MORE GUILT
Ever find yourself crashing out after a long day at school, sitting on your bed watching Netflix, and getting nothing done? It sounds horrible when I put it that way. Bed rotting, doom scrolling, whatever it is, it’s never a fun thing.
Here’s the thing though— it doesn’t have to feel that way.
There are two states that we can consider you to be in. Focus and Relaxation. The situation I described above is caught in between these two states. You want to be in a focus state, but you’re overwhelmed and stuck in your relaxation state. The opposite is also true. You try to get work done but catch yourself distracted, on your phone, instead. You are in a focus state, but you want to be in a relaxation state.
The number one change you can do to help your mental health is to choose a side.
When you are in your focus state, commit. You put your best effort in and keep your mind engaged in what you are working on. No distractions. This is going to help you get so much more work done in a shorter period of time. As you practice this, you are going to realize that when you are in your focus state, distractions are less enticing and you will be able to maintain it for longer.
Disclaimer: if you have to tell yourself to “lock in” you aren’t doing it right. Forcing yourself into a focus state is never going to work, it's just going to lead to that same, tiring, useless feeling.
To actually decompress and feel happier, you can’t have second thoughts in your relaxation. Set a timer if you have to, but you need to let yourself enjoy whatever you are doing. Imagine this: after a long hard day, you treat yourself by getting some popcorn, bundle yourself up in blankets, dim the lights, and get to watch the movie that’s been on your bucket list for the past week. So much better than what we started with, right? The cycle of guilt relaxation starts with wanting to decompress but feeling guilty the whole time. You don’t rest and aren’t happy because all you’ve been thinking about is “I have to get work done.” Instead, you get more tired, and you need to continue laying around or scrolling on your phone.
You don’t have to change your entire routine— just be more mindful about which state you are in and how you can take advantage of that.
International Space Station transit of the Moon taken by Quinn Groessl on January 31 2023.
The ISS orbits the Earth at a typical velocity of 28000 km/h (very fast) and at a typical altitude of 400 km. Gravitational forces keep the ISS in constant freefall, but with the forward velocity of the ISS, the overall distance to Earth and velocity stays pretty much the same.
These transits are pretty infrequent. The angle of the moon from the orbital plane can vary over time, and any small changes in the ISS orbit can have major effects on its path. In the sky, they are both fairly small objects, leading to smaller probabilities as well.
An important factor that allows these events to occur is that the ISS is traveling much faster relative to our perspective on Earth compared to the moon. The ISS orbits the Earth around 16 times a day, while the moon takes around a month (27.3 days).
You can see the video of it at this link. It's incredible how precise astronomers have to be with how short of a timespan there is to record this.