Latest Posts by donutdomain - Page 2

Egg Nebula

also known as RAFGL 2688 and CRL 2688, the Egg Nebula is located 3000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus.

The nebula is a bi-polar proto-planetary nebula, or essentially a star in the dying days of it's existence starting to throw out shells of atmosphere as it moves towards being a white dwarf.

The central star is concealed by an area of dust with the light poking out in areas where the dust is lightest, this is thought to be an accretion disk around the star.

Did you know? There are about 300 species of sea pens that can be found swaying on the ocean floor around the world.🪶

You might be surprised to find out that this feather-like structure is actually a colony of polyps that work together to survive. Different polyps have different responsibilities depending on their location on the body. There are feeding polyps that catch plankton, as well as polyps that circulate water to keep the colony balanced and upright.

Photo: Richard Ling, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, flickr; kidney sea pens (Sarcoptilus grandis) pictured

#AnimalFacts #OceanLife #SeaPen #Ocean #nature #fish #dyk #MarineLife #MarineBiology https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb_UKlsLemR/?utm_medium=tumblr

Meet NGC 2841

Location: In the constellation Ursa Major

Type: Flocculent spiral galaxy

Discovered by: William Herschel

NGC 2841 is a beautiful example of a flocculent spiral galaxy – a type with discontinuous, featherlike, and patchy arms. A bright cusp of starlight distinguishes the galaxy's center from the dust lanes that outline the group of almost white middle-aged stars. The far younger blue stars trace the spiral arms.

Find out more information about NGC 2841 here.

Right now, the Hubble Space Telescope is exploring #GalaxiesGalore! Find more galaxy content and spectacular new images by following along on Hubble’s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: M. Crockett and S. Kaviraj (Oxford University, UK), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), B. Whitmore (STScI), and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee

How to learn drawing MH monsters

Hey Anon! First of all I’m very honored, thanks a lot!!

You’re asking a very interesting question in my opinion, so I hope you will find a long response interesting as well c:

When I want to learn how to draw a new Monster, I base myself on the Monster’s design (ofc) but also on general knowledge, especially anatomy. Anatomy is crucially important even when drawing creatures that do not exist, simply in order to make them believable!

So if you struggle to draw MH Monsters, that are famous for their ‘realism’ and believability, first ask yourself what level you have in basic anatomy: if you know how skeleton works, muscles work, transcribing it into proportions and joints, things like that.

(Art I made for fun for my RP blog)

I sadly can’t offer you much advice on how to learn it, because anatomy is partly intuitive to me; and lots of my artistic anatomy studies were more centered around human anatomy (however, a lot of muscle groups are similar to animals, so even my knowledge of humans is useful when drawing monsters). I also have to mention I’m a vet student, and we had medical anatomy classes in the first year, which helped a lot as well; but I’m sure you can find online resources that will teach you the basics for art!

Keep reading

Deltoid animated study, this muscle helps raising the arm!

Part 2 of cino art tips is some basic tips on shape and silhouette design which are also principles I think about a lot :)

(also i'm so sorry i chose comic sans to write this in idk what i was thinking but i already flattened the layers)

i don't have any other obvious tips off the top of my head rn but feel free to ask anything you are curious about! i love getting asks uwu

Your art is amazing!!! I love the stunning use of colour! Do you have a process to pic colours or just mess with them until you get something you like? :)

Thank you, you’re so sweet!! When I draw my own characters I just pick colors I like but for fanart there’s a few things I do. I’ll share my process here in hopes it might help!

Comfort

When working with vibrant colors I like to soften them by warming them up, making them similar to each other, and avoiding pure colors altogether. Our eyes are sensitive so I never want my colors to be too bright or contrasting.

Unique

Tertiary colors are more unique and calming than primary colors so I use them a lot to punch up my art without making things too intense. It also puts a fun twist on designs when we use colors that are close but not exactly like the originals.

Balance

Balancing colors is so important! It’s my final step to completing every color palette I make. There has to be a variety, contrast, and a connection between colors. Adding a little of the same color to all of the others helps to accomplish this. Usually I take a shortcut by adding a color overlay in my painting programs. This is also another reason why I never use pure white or black---those colors will not be affected by color overlays.

There’s also my color post here if anyone wants to know more about color theory and things. Color is a huge deal but it’s really fun!

Art Tips for Vibrant Lighting

Some tips and tricks for getting glowy, beautiful, vibrant lighting effects…especially in traditional art, with no ctrl+z! The example piece is a watercolor work in progress of mine and, if you’re familiar with watercolor, you know it’s super unforgiving. What you put down stays!

Tip 1: Create a thumbnail

Do a very loose, messy sketch of your illustration. This helps define the composition, but it can also help you pick where your light is coming from and what colors you’ll use for it. This way, you can reference the light source and colors while you’re painting!

Even if you’re working digitally, this creates a great color key you can turn back to. You can make a thumbnail digitally or traditionally. 

This thumbnail only took about 20 minutes…and it’s saved so many headaches during the painting process. 

When you have a thumbnail, the rest of your painting is just a translation of those colors with a better technique. 

Tips:

Feel free to make many thumbnails! This is the easiest step to revise and repeat.

Use a photo for inspiration for your color scheme. I used clouds in the evening as color references. 

Play around with layers and effects (like overlay, multiply). This can help you figure out new colors that you can then try to capture traditionally!

Tip 2: Don’t forget about your lines!

Line art is important for gradients! I did mine first, so I had to consider the glow effect too. It’s a bit blurry (as its a screenshot from a reel, lol), but you can see yellows to dark browns and blacks. This established the glow from the start!

Tips:

Consider using a media you can get gradients in. I used acryla gouache here, but ink, watercolor, and even markers can work well! 

If it’s hard to visualize highlights in line art, do the lines after with pen or paint! Adding shadows and highlights that way can be easier. 

Tip 3: Start with big gradients first

Once you have your sketch on paper finished, start with large gradients! This helps define your light source and keep your whole composition making sense. 

Here, I started with the background sky, then added in the shadow coming off the wing before doing anything else. Take note of how helpful the thumbnail was in helping me lay this all out, too!

Tip 4: Think warm to cool

See how both the hair and wings move from warm (yellow/browns) to cool colors (blues, payne’s grey)? This is a surefire way to keep the strong light source and make it look like the light is glowing!

Tips:

This is all about keeping the colors close to your light source, so if your light source is cool (like the moon), your highlights are cool and your shadows are warm tones. The key is just to keep it consistent! 

Lighting isn’t just light to dark gradients. It’s also warm to cool/cool to warm!

Think about all the spots the light catches (like that one front feather on the left top). It takes a lot of thinking through, but it’ll make a huge impact! (Remember, you can always revisit your thumbnail or add more details in there)

Don’t forget about reflected light, bouncing off another surface. It’ll be more subtle than the main light source, but still there!

Final Tips:

Love those gradients! Watercolor is meant for beautiful gradients, so use multiple colors for a glow. The feathers in the light go from yellow ochre to prussian blue to payne’s grey.

Start with the highlights first, then work into the shadows! Above, the skin isn’t even painted with shadows yet, because I wanted to get the lighting first.

This is just a WIP right now, but I hope these tips help! If you want to follow, I’ll be posting more progress pics (and the finished illustration soon too). :D

My: Instagram | Twitter

Spent a long time on this art resource/reference masterpost! Finally starting to edit to add more. This will be REGULARLY updated so it’s gonna get huge. If you have a request for resources for me to find OR have a resource you want me to add, just send me an ask :D

General Anatomy/Human stuff:

body quick tips

painting/drawing straight hair

how to draw eyes

arm squish/bend tip

chest/pecks with raised arms tip

long hair how to

male torso anatomy (back)

learn manga male anatomy (torso & arm)

male torso anatomy (front)

head and hair tips (scroll  a bit, it’s in one of the images!)

how to draw noses

ears tilty tip

arm tips

two tips for drawing women’s hair

drawing teeth

anatomy tips

random hair and mouth ref anime

leg muscle anatomy ref

arm muscles anatomy ref

knees reference

arm ref study

quick arm tut tip

how to draw arm

shoulders n sleeves

Poses:

umbrella poses

random female poses

random anatomy pose thing

chibi sleeping in hands pose

laying poses

elf (?) with staff poses

holding phone half bod

peeny wolf pose set

perspective pose sheet

anatomy poses 

crossed arms ref sheet

holding baby poses

Hands:

how to draw hands 1

hand refs & tutorial 2

hand tutorial 3

hand tutorial 4

36 hands

how to draw hands in 10 minutes

hands ref 2

hand gestures and simplifying the hand

arm & hand ref

500 hands

Diversity:

stop drawing natives red

wheelchair tutorial

drawing fat people

vitiligo notes for artists

darkskin palms

epicanthic folds

biracial characters

do’s and don’ts of thick lips

Animals/Creatures:

how to draw falcon beaks

canine studies (broken down into parts)

feline tiger ref

Insect wing venation

Musculature of a T-Rex

Pony bodies tutorial

Hyena Nose tutorial

horse reference

drawing horns

Flesh tutorial

bird tips

wing basics

making mythical creatures look realistic

pony heads tutorial 

dragon designing tutorial pt 3/3

pony wings tutorial

hedgie bodies

Furry/Anthro:

dogquest’s pixel tutorial

furry portrait tutorial

furry pants tutorial

how to draw paws/pawhands

fur direction reference

anthro tips

muzzle shapes

furry styles

anthro expressions

f2u chibi-ish furry base

furry / cartoon head tutorial

f2u furry base/pose w three different ears

drawing humans! for animal artists

Backgrounds:

how to draw debris

fire tutorial

night sky tutorial

materials study with notes

tree tutorial

water tutorial

tangents??

ocean painting

clouds tutorial

bubbles

painty background studies tips

peony tutorial

lakeside tutorial

quick flowers for the lazy

mistletoe vs holly

Perspective:

foreshortening coil technique

foreshortening tutorial

Webcomic:

medibang comic panel tutorial

how i make webcomics/webtoons

how to color comics

the art of lettering comics

comic/doujinshi paneling

in depth webcomic tutorial

Coloring:

The colorpicking problem

72 Color Combinations

How ViPOP uses color

Hair coloring tutorial by rosuuri

Gurochii moe quick eye tutorial

Anime eye tutorial

Mermaid tail tutorial

Grayscale to Color painting tutorial

chibi eye walkthrough

skin tone tutorial 1

curly hair tutorial

color palette

coloring tutorial

light, it gets everywhere

comfort color

skin coloring tutorial

holographic tutorial

dappled lighting effect

cute/bright coloring tutorial 

pattern trick

arcana character coloring tut

Expressions/ Meme / style:

small body language study

expressions reference

how to cute

Platonic cuddles meme

expression reference : nervous

flustered expression meme

drawing expressions tutorial/key

Pixel Art:

Pixel icon tutorial

Ice cream

Moving clouds tutorial

50x50 pixel doll tutorial

pixelin’s pixel process

pixel expression ref

pixel eye blinking tutorial

how to pixel liquids

Clothing / Accessories:

Shoes

Fancy color tip / ref

Chainmail

short reference

learn manga basic pleated skirt tutorial

learn manga basic frills

random clothing refs

chainmail brush

clothing ref masterpost

pinstripes tips

cloth texture tips

how to clothing folds

Misc:

Sketchfab 3d Models

Mikeymegamega on YT for anime/ecchi/etc

Gentei_sozai on twitter for chibi poses

S0zalsan on twitter for random poses

mecha basics

75 tutorials

Obvious art tips you might have forgotten

Mosaic effect

how to draw a cute chibi

fighting artblock

cute pikachu base

painting a face tutorial

volume commissions mini tutorial

arcana characters tutorial reference

notes from the “animators survival kit”

concept art tutorial

another art resource masterpost

MS paint tips and tricks

Reference table for drawing CONSISTENT faces

@hanari0716 on twitter for HELLA references

animation guide for beginners

Brushes:

Foliage brushes

cityscape brushes

ghibli brushes

clip studio paint assets

PS brush pack

a digital artist’s guide to digital art guides

hi my qualification for writing this guide to youtube art tutorials (though it may be applicable to other forms of media as well) is that i have watched over (roughly) 200 art tutorials of various length, artistry, content, style, and more

when we’re told “look up guides online” there’s not really much more to say on how to approach our research and taking them in, so if you’re a little lost in the vast sea of art help like i was as a wee bab, then this may help!

General Use:

don’t feel bad for skipping - if something isn’t striking you as informative or helpful, don’t feel bad for moving right along and treating it like a sponsor

^ also applies for lengthy talking or deriving from the point, if you’re not up for it. you don’t need to sit through the artists’ whole spiel to learn how to draw hands.

if something isn’t making sense, reach out to communities for help, and go beyond youtube/tumblr. reddit and discord servers are also full of places to go to talk to more ppl

trust your gut! if someone’s style makes you go “hmm this feels wrong and objectifying”, it’s because it is - feel free to move right along

^ also applies for if it feels like the artist is just showing off and not explaining enough, or just posting for ego boost or to get coin.

… related tip but if an artist likes to rant about discourse as the primary thing on their channel, i know drama can be fun and juicy but please just avoid these people, because generally they’re either nasty and toxic-minded, or they seem to have some bs going on for them in the background

check out comments and online discussion to see how well received a popular artist is, and pay attention to their discourse to avoid any mistakes they unintentionally or even proudly display

the art program is not important!!! every art program has some level of similar functionality, some with more bells and whistles than others, and very rarely does one program lack a key tool the others don’t have. the hardest part is translating what your artist means when they say one thing but your program has another - but more often than not, some similar wording or like words are used for the same tool or setting.

^ this means you can watch that tutorial on how to draw legs for clip studio if all you have is firealpaca

Information over Entertainment! the best artists to find help in are ones who focus primarily on relaying information and less on colorful quirky editing - those kinds CAN be helpful, but in general i tend to find more useful tips in videos that feel more academic as opposed to more entertaining.

don’t feel bad for flatout ignoring advice. if you found something that works better for you, please use it. feel free to try new techniques as well if you’re feeling stuck or want a change of pace!

Terms and Conditions:

What words should you use when finding the right video? Think like a content creator, here. General words are best when searching for the right video, and in order to think of those words, you need to know the parts of art. Lines, anatomy, colors, values, background, perspective, etc - figure out which part or parts you struggle with, and use one term at a time.

What types of videos are for me? If you are a Fresh Brand New Baby Beginner Artist that doesn’t even know much about art letalone art programs, then stick to tutorials that are labelled “for beginners”. If you know your way around an art program but you’re still pretty new, then your average art tutorial should be most helpful. More entertaining artists should be ok to start with! If you know your way around art but not programs, look for “art program reviews”, then once you’ve picked one or a few to mess around with (though I really recommend one at a time), look for “(program name) intro to / introductory”. And if you are well aware of everything I’ve listed, then you’ll be needing “intermediary / intermediate” tutorials. These ones are best given by master artists who focus on academic presentation. If you’re a master, you don’t even need this tumblr post wyd  😂

Just some quick clothing folds, weight, and shape visuals.

how to improve drawing kinda fast:

ditch lineart for a bit (this way its easier to part with things that aren’t working)

use a REALLY thin brush

copy, copy, copy art you think is ✨art goals✨

don’t post that stuff tho :O

if you need to trace at first, thats fine lol but break away from that eventually!! you gotta train your eyes to draw what you see, spatial awareness is very important

copy hands, poses, expressions, anything you wanna get better at

don’t copy from refs that are way too simple to be used as a “master study”, like from the calarts shows etc.

copy from stuff thats kinda complex bc if you learn how to draw it in that complex way, you can always simplify it if you want ^^

im pretty sure this is how many of us have become obsessed with hip dips details LOL

if something looks off, flip ur canvas, mess with ur sketch, or even delete (or hide) parts of the sketch and try again. if you drew it once, u can draw it again. (erase or hold up the page to the light backwards if drawing on paper)

being cool with parting with your sketch if its not working will make you a better artist

youre allowed to frankenstein refs together lol (a hand from here, a mouth from there…)

if youre having trouble making your sketches look like theres actual shapes, try shading :D

literally the only reason i shade now is to show the shapes of objects in more of a painterly way (its not just for paintings btw, its just easier to describe it that way)

try new things that youre excited about like perspective, anatomy, blah blah

copy!!!! while youre copying it’s gonna be cool to see how much you remember when you try it on your own

scribble a doodle as often as you can, not like urgently, but like as something to look forward to (like how lots of ppl look forward to wordle everyday lol)

this list can apply to anyone but its fine if you wanna take some advice and leave some if it doesn’t work out. this list is mostly just to get you comfortable with sketching and learning, not performing.

I mention that “not performing” thing bc its easy to want to please social media platforms because that attention and validation can feel amazing! 

but its also addicting because many of us crave being in a community and talking to ppl who like the same things we do

there are many communities out there from artist youtubers, artist streamers, etc. and many of them have discords and stuff and it might be fun to join! and/or join fandom ones if u want ^^ 

that way you have something thats not bound by if ig decides to not show your post to your followers or something

there’s also lots of other platforms that aren’t social media based specifically for artist communities too!

with this said, please be safe! never give out private info and you’re always free to block/report ppl who make u uncomfortable or ask weird things. 

on the topic of being in communities… reblog art you like! comment the nice things youre thinking in the tags or in an actual comment! share art you like on your ig story!

firstly, this is great for making friends

secondly, the artist cant read ur mind so they don’t hear anything nice youre saying :(

comments can be so motivating!! hearing nice things from my mutuals about my art feels great bc of that authentic human connection we’ve all been missing for like 2 years now

if i see a mutual drawing something and i think “omg they did amazing with the expression!” i write it (ive also been told i leave comments as if im talking and its kinda funny to read sometimes xD)

its channeling “girls support girls” culture in a way lol we’re our best when we’re lifting each other up <3

luv ya, be safe!! and draw lots of things!! :D

add stuff that’s helped you improve kinda fast if u want too! if we put all our brain cells together we’ll be unstoppable heheh

Some people asked how I paint hair, so I made this very simplified explanation, but I hope it helps someone.

The @ is my twitter btw ^~

Figured out how to post the actual videos!

did a quick colouring tutorial for someone so dropping it here

HiPOD 22 Apr 2022: Layers to the West of Gale Crater

The objective of this observation is to examine thin layers in the Nepenthes Mensae region. Because this location is close to Gale Crater, these layers may one day be compared to those currently being studied by the Curiosity rover. This scene was also imaged by the Context Camera onboard MRO.

Nepenthes Mensae is a plateau, whose name derives from Greek for a drug that quells all sorrows with forgetfulness. “Nepenthe” literally means “without grief” (ne = not, penthos = grief) and was a potion given to Helen by an Egyptian queen in Homer’s “Odyssey.”

Enhanced color image is less than 1 km across; black and white is less than 5 km.

ID: ESP_055565_1750 date: 4 June 2018 altitude: 265 km

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Random Fact #3,062

The wind on Neptune can blow at speeds of 2,000 km/hour.

The winds causing the Great Dark Spot specifically have been measured to be around 1,127 km/hour.

Random Fact #3,517

A lightning spark can reach over 8 kilometres in length.

Herschel’s view of new stars and molecular clouds by europeanspaceagency

Symmetry Magazine

How JWST will test models of cold dark matter

By Madeleine O’Keefe

Two projects in JWST’s first observation cycle will probe the nature of dark matter.

On Christmas morning of 2021, an Ariane 5 CEA rocket blasted off from Kourou, French Guinea. It carried with it the largest and most sophisticated space telescope ever built: the James Webb Space Telescope.

Since then, JWST has reached its orbit about 1 million miles from Earth, unfurled its tennis-court-sized sunshield, and aligned its 18 hexagonal mirror segments. The telescope’s first images are expected by summer.

Over the next decade, JWST will make cutting-edge observations to help scientists answer myriad outstanding questions in astronomy—including questions about the nature of dark matter.

Hot, warm or cold Dark matter is an enigmatic substance that scientists believe accounts for 85% of matter in the universe. But so far it has not been observed directly; scientists can infer dark matter’s presence only by observing its gravitational effects on normal matter.

Different theories posit different types of dark-matter particles. Dark-matter candidates considered “hot” or “warm” are particles that would have moved so quickly in the early universe that gravity would not have been able to confine them. On the other hand, dark-matter candidates considered “cold” are thought to have moved so slowly that gravity would have formed them into small dark-matter structures that eventually would have coalesced into larger, “clumpy” ones.

“Decades’ worth of computer simulations have tested how structure forms and grows under the hypothesis of cold dark matter,” says Matthew Walker, an associate professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Cold dark-matter simulations show dark matter clumping into small blobs, which encounter other blobs and merge together, continually snowballing until large structures like the Milky Way are formed. These gravitationally bound blobs of dark matter are known as halos.

JWST can see your halo Anna Nierenberg, assistant professor of physics at University of California, Merced, was awarded 39 hours of observing time during JWST’s Cycle 1 to look for small dark-matter halos.

Many models, including the baseline dark-matter model, predict the existence of small (107 solar mass) halos that do not actually contain galaxies. Such a halo would “just be a blob of dark matter” with no stars inside it, Nierenberg says.

If there are no stars within these blobs of invisible material, how can we even try to detect them? Nierenberg and her team of nearly 20 scientists in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium and Chile are using a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

Born of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravitational lensing says that matter bends spacetime and, subsequently, any light that encounters it. If light from a distant source travels through the universe toward Earth and passes by a massive object—such as a blob of dark matter—the light will be warped around it. If the in-between object is massive enough, the light is deflected in such a way that we’ll see up to four images of the light source appearing around the mass.

Nierenberg’s group will measure the number of small dark-matter halos by observing a sample of quasars (supermassive black holes at cosmological distances surrounded by dusty accretion disks) that have been gravitationally lensed. Detecting small halos would be a triumph for the cold dark-matter theory; conversely, not detecting small halos would imply that cold dark matter does not exist.

Because the light from these quasars must travel a great distance in an ever-expanding universe, it is stretched along the way, pulling its wavelengths into the infrared range. The mid-infrared wavelengths they are observing are almost impossible to see with ground-based telescopes. “We’re going to be observing with absolute reddest bands that JWST can accommodate,” Nierenberg says.

These wavelengths cannot be observed by the Hubble Space Telescope, which studies gravitational lensing at visible wavelengths. And older space-based telescopes that can see in the mid-infrared don’t have the resolution to separate the different lenses. Making these observations in mid-IR requires the high spatial resolution that only the JWST can provide, Nierenberg says.

Daniel Gilman, a postdoc at the University of Toronto and one of Nierenberg’s co-investigators, says, “The kind of data that we can get with JWST is unique and much more powerful or constraining than the kind of data that we could get with Hubble or from the ground.”

Nierenberg says, “I really believe that this is going to be a huge scientific step forward.”

Looking far and wide Walker is leading another dark-matter project in JWST’s Cycle 1, but his group didn’t apply for observing time. Instead, they are using data that JWST is collecting for other programs.

Walker’s group’s “archival research” is looking inside dwarf galaxies to find wide binary stars, systems of two stars orbiting each other at relatively large distances (on the order of one parsec, slightly less than the distance between the sun and our closest neighbor, Proxima Centauri).

“Because [wide binary stars] are so far apart, they’re very fragile systems,” says Walker. “If, say, a little dark-matter halo were to fly past a wide binary-star system, it could exchange energy with either or both of the stars in that system. And it just takes a small fraction of a fraction of a percent increase in the energy of either star to rip the pair apart.”

If Walker’s team finds wide binary stars, “we can be reasonably confident that those sub-galactic cold dark matter halos don’t exist,” he says. “And that, then, would be a real problem for the cold dark-matter model in general.”

That’s what Katharine Lee, a junior physics major at Carnegie Mellon in Walker’s group, likes about the project. “I particularly think this research is really interesting because the current framework for what we think of as the structure of dark matter is the cold dark-matter model, and the research that Professor Walker’s doing could potentially invalidate that.”

If the group did not find wide binary stars, it could be a sign that they were destroyed by dark matter. But it would not prove that they were destroyed—they may just have never formed in these dwarf galaxies in the first place.

Walker says that JWST is an ideal tool for this search because of its “exquisite sensitivity to faint objects,” as well as the telescope’s abilities to take high-quality images and distinguish pairs of sources at very small separations. And thanks to its 21-foot-diameter primary mirror, JWST will see farther than any other telescope ever built.

“I think JWST is going to give us a new and really powerful angle,” says Jorge Peñarrubia, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and one of Walker’s co-investigators. “But even if that fails, we’ll find other ways.”

Indeed, there are many other techniques that scientists use to search for dark matter, including direct searches by physics experiments. And both Nierenberg and Walker are using gravitational lensing and wide binary-star methods on data from the Hubble Space Telescope while they wait for JWST to open its eyes.

Future JWST science programs might further explore the mysteries of dark matter, whether through gravitational lensing or perhaps by observing statistics of galaxy evolution that scientists can then compare to dark-matter theories.

“We don’t lack theories of what dark matter could be. There are a lot of them,” Gilman says. “What we lack are observations that wield a lot of constraining power over these theories. And that’s something that JWST is going to give us.”

Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Olena Shmahalo

how to hit your guys with the crust rays

a friend of mine was having trouble with a character of hers, he was middle-aged but looked too young, so she came to me for help. i'm something of a middle-aged-man-fan so i whipped up this quick thing to help her out. it might be useful to somebody out there so i'll share it here too!

Can u do a tutorial about how to fold wings In various angles?

I am no expert but this is kinda how I do it, let the wiggly line guide the overall bend to a wing. The more sudden the bump in the wiggly line the more bent your wing will be

HiPOD 20 Apr 2022: Recent Gullies in Equatorial Valles Marineris

Although actively-forming gullies are common in the middle latitudes of Mars, there are also pristine-looking gullies in equatorial regions.

In this scene, the gullies have very sharp channels and different colors where the gullies have eroded and deposited material. Over time, the topography becomes smoothed over and the color variations disappear, unless there is recent activity.

Changes have not been visible here from before-and-after images, and maybe such differences are apparent compared to older images, but nobody has done a careful comparison. What may be needed to see subtle changes is a new image that matches the lighting conditions of an older one. Equatorial gully activity is probably much less common—perhaps there is major downslope avalanching every few centuries—so we need to be lucky to see changes.

MRO has now been imaging Mars for over 16 years, and the chance of seeing rare activity increases as the time interval widens between repeat images.

Enhanced color image is less than 1 km across.

ID: ESP_072612_1685 date: 22 January 2022 altitude: 263 km

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Give it a try

A friend of mine shared this fantastic resource over Discord, so did a few studies in-between working on homework!

Stars and Dust Across Corona Australis : Cosmic dust clouds cross a rich field of stars in this telescopic vista near the northern boundary of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown. Less than 500 light-years away the dust clouds effectively block light from more distant background stars in the Milky Way. Top to bottom the frame spans about 2 degrees or over 15 light-years at the clouds’ estimated distance. At top right is a group of lovely reflection nebulae cataloged as NGC 6726, 6727, 6729, and IC 4812. A characteristic blue color is produced as light from hot stars is reflected by the cosmic dust. The dust also obscures from view stars in the region still in the process of formation. Just above the bluish reflection nebulae a smaller NGC 6729 surrounds young variable star R Coronae Australis. To its right are telltale reddish arcs and loops identified as Herbig Haro objects associated with energetic newborn stars. Magnificent globular star cluster NGC 6723 is at bottom left in the frame. Though NGC 6723 appears to be part of the group, its ancient stars actually lie nearly 30,000 light-years away, far beyond the young stars of the Corona Australis dust clouds. via NASA

IC 342: Hidden Galaxy

"IC 342 is a challenging cosmic target. Although it is bright, the galaxy sits near the equator of the Milky Way’s galactic disk, where the sky is thick with glowing cosmic gas, bright stars, and dark, obscuring dust. In order for astronomers to see the intricate spiral structure of IC 342, they must gaze through a large amount of material contained within our own galaxy — no easy feat! As a result IC 342 is relatively difficult to spot and image, giving rise to its intriguing nickname: the “Hidden Galaxy.” Located very close (in astronomical terms) to the Milky Way, this sweeping spiral galaxy would be among the brightest in the sky were it not for its dust-obscured location. The galaxy is very active, as indicated by the range of colors visible in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, depicting the very central region of the galaxy. A beautiful mixture of hot, blue star-forming regions, redder, cooler regions of gas, and dark lanes of opaque dust can be seen, all swirling together around a bright core. In 2003, astronomers confirmed this core to be a specific type of central region known as an HII nucleus — a name that indicates the presence of ionized hydrogen — that is likely to be creating many hot new stars."

Image and information from NASA.

Your writing will always feel awkward to you, because you wrote it.

Your plot twists will always feel predictable, because you created them.

Your stories will always feel a bit boring to you, because you read them a million times.

They won't feel like that for your reader.