Sky Observer Anthony Cook

Sky, space information, and more! Igor Stravinsky and J.S. Bach my fav. composers when not listening to Darius Milhaud.
Griffith Observatory 1978-2021, retired.

[Steve Hilton @SteveHiltonx]

China Town - San Francisco:

Look what I just found in my fortune cookie:

CHANGE IS COMING

$3.00 gas

First $100k tax free

Steve Hilton for Governor 2026!

[Chandra Observatory @chandraxray]

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is blowing a hot cosmic wind — something scientists have been hunting for over 50 years. ⚫More on the discovery at: https://t.co/rm9nkb4Jsf

[Anna Lulis @annamlulis]

This is Henry Nowak’s family

He had an older sister and two baby siblings

“Henry did nothing wrong. He was one of the kindest, friendliest… person you’ll ever meet.”

Never forget what they did

[Sky Observer Anthony Cook @AnthonyJCook2]

@bobiscancer @WarrenVsCCP Or else end up as organ donors.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇨🇳 Censorship in China is backfiring now that young Chinese are secretly learning about the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Even with AI scrubbing every trace of June 4, 1989 from the internet, China’s Gen Z is finding the truth anyway... and often in the weirdest ways!

Olympic skater Alysa Liu’s dad was a Tiananmen protester who fled.

When she won gold, Chinese netizens exploded: some called him a traitor, others got curious.

One 20-year-old Wuhan student dropped a hint on RedNote and her comment got nuked in hours.

Teens are stumbling on it through random livestreams and digging behind the firewall.

They come out stunned: “I had no idea the protests were that huge” or “my whole worldview just collapsed.”

The regime’s total blackout is actually creating curiosity bombs.

Young Chinese are horrified when they learn students were shot and tanks rolled over people, and some now want out.

Truth will always find cracks.

Even the Great Firewall can’t stop it forever.

Source: Washington Post

[Tiny Reverie🇺🇸✝️ @TReverie]

1989年中国人的面相、氣質、眼裡的光芒，都跟現在的中國人完全不一樣….

一代菁英全都輾碎在坦克車之下了⋯⋯

[Luke de Pulford @lukedepulford]

It’s June 4th in Hong Kong. 🕯️

[平井宏治 KOJI HIRAI @KojiHirai6]

写真は、六四天安門事件後、人民解放軍に銃撃され亡くなった中国人学生の遺体を確認する北京の病院関係者。海外のメディアはこうした現実を報道した。自由と民主化を求めた若者たちに対し、国家権力が銃口を向けた。これが、共産党が独裁政治を行う社会の現実。六四天安門事件は、中国共産党体制の本質を示す歴史的事実であり、自由を求めて命を落とした学生や市民のことを、私たちは忘れてはならない。犠牲となられた方々に、心より哀悼の意を表します。合掌。

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

Today is 37 years since the Tiananmen Massacre

On this day in 1989, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the People's Liberation Army to open fire on its own citizens.

Peaceful pro-democracy students and workers who gathered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square demanding freedom, anti-corruption, and basic human rights were crushed under tanks and gunfire.

The protests began in mid-April 1989, triggered by the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang. On May 13, students began a hunger strike. Martial law was declared on May 20, but protesters remained peaceful.

In the early hours of June 4, troops advanced with tanks and live ammunition. Soldiers fired on unarmed civilians blocking their path in the streets surrounding the square.

Hundreds to thousands were killed. Thousands more were imprisoned, tortured, or disappeared.

To this day, the Chinese government censors all mention of it, erases it from history books, and threatens anyone who remembers.

[Sky Observer Anthony Cook @AnthonyJCook2]

@otherside_X42 @ThePrimalDino Speak up!

[Spaceflight Now @SpaceflightNow]

NASA head urges new launcher for Blue Origin’s moon landers to meet Artemis mission deadlines

📰: https://t.co/uxFxp46ifU

[Spaceflight Now @SpaceflightNow]

NASA head urges new launcher for Blue Origin’s moon landers to meet Artemis mission deadlines

📰: https://t.co/uxFxp46ifU

[NSF - NASASpaceflight.com @NASASpaceflight]

Europe's "The Exploration Company (TEC)", developing the reusable Nyx spacecraft, completed a dedicated drop test of the Nyx parachute system in the Mojave Desert, California.

https://t.co/gPhISiSs6R

[Dan Goldin @dansgoldin]

Woke up thinking about the late John Glenn. This is me with him just after he landed at Kennedy Space Center onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-95) to become, at age 77, the oldest person to orbit the Earth.

One day, during my 6th year as NASA Administrator, John Glenn paid me a visit at my office in Washington, D.C.

He sat down and explained that he had been studying the effects of space on aging bodies, and he wanted me to send him to space so he could run experiments on his body.

At the time, John Glenn was a revered Senator of Ohio for 24 years.

But, he had been a hero to me and to America ever since he successfully became the first American astronaut to orbit the earth in 1962.

Up until then, the Soviets had been leaping ahead of us in space. They launched the first man, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. And then they once again beat us by keeping a cosmonaut in space for a full day.

On Feb. 20, 1962, at 40 years old, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth during the three-orbit Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, aboard the spacecraft he named Friendship 7.

At the time, I was about to turn 22 and I had just started as an ion plasma engineer at NASA Lewis in Cleveland, Ohio. On that day, I remember the hope and confidence John Glenn instilled in all of us to take space on as a country and beat the Soviets to the moon.

In fact, John Glenn became so much a hero to our nation that President Kennedy felt that we couldn’t risk losing him and declared that he would never go to space again.

So now decades later, here I was as NASA Administrator being asked by this American hero to reverse President Kennedy’s decree and risk sending him back to space again… this time at age 77!

I told Senator Glenn that he would need to pass the same physical exam standards the younger astronauts took – 20/20 vision, whether naturally or with corrective lenses, and a sitting blood pressure not to exceed 140/90.

He passed. But what most don’t know is that this is also me grabbing him by his flight suit from behind to prop him up, because he had lost his sense of balance from disrupting the equilibrium in his ears while in space 😛.

I couldn’t have our American hero stumbling around with all the press and crowd watching him!

I thank John Glenn for energizing America and our confidence to reach the heavens. He also always championed space and technology, in public and private spheres – especially during my brutal battles as a newbie Administrator on The Hill.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

Her name was Betty Ong.

And for 23 minutes on September 11, 2001, she became the calmest voice in America.

Betty was 45 years old.
A flight attendant from San Francisco.
Known to coworkers simply as “Bee.”

That morning, she was working aboard American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles.

She had picked up the trip because she planned to continue home to San Francisco afterward and then fly to Hawaii for a vacation with her sister.

At 7:59 a.m., the plane took off.

Twenty minutes later, Betty picked up a phone at the back of the aircraft and called American Airlines operations.

The reservations agent who answered heard a calm voice say:

“I think we’re getting hijacked.”

Nobody had ever made a call like that before.

Betty stayed on the line for the next 23 minutes.

While chaos unfolded around her, she remained composed and methodical.

She reported that the cockpit wasn’t responding.
That flight attendants had been stabbed.
That passengers were struggling to breathe after something resembling Mace had been sprayed.

She even gave seat numbers for the suspected hijackers.

Everything she observed was passed from American Airlines to the FAA and air traffic control in real time.

Her call helped authorities understand something horrifying:

This wasn’t an accident.

This was coordinated.

This was an attack.

People later falsely described Betty as hysterical during the call.

The woman who spoke with her directly said the opposite was true.

“She was calm, professional, and poised.”

Betty never stopped doing her job.

Even in the final minutes of her life.

At 8:46 a.m., Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

The line suddenly went silent.

The agent on the other end waited a moment and quietly asked:

“Betty… are you there?”

No answer came back.

Months later, Betty’s family fought to obtain the recording of her final call.

When they finally heard it, her brother explained something that stayed with many people afterward:

Betty never called home.

Not because she didn’t love her family.

Because in that moment, she believed her responsibility was to the passengers and crew around her.

That’s who she was.

Today, Betty Ong’s name is memorialized at Ground Zero and throughout San Francisco’s Chinatown.

But what makes her unforgettable isn’t only the tragedy.

It’s the extraordinary calm she showed while facing unimaginable fear.

She was heading to Hawaii.

Instead, she picked up a phone and helped the world understand what was happening while there was still time to warn others.

That is what courage sometimes looks like.

Not loud.
Not dramatic.

Just a steady voice doing its job until the very end.

[Xi Van Fleet @XVanFleet]

37 years ago today, the CCP launched its brutal crackdown on the peaceful student-led protests in Tiananmen Square. What made this atrocity especially shocking was that it unfolded before the eyes of the world, broadcast live on TV.

In the decades since, the CCP has worked relentlessly to erase this chapter of history. Many younger Chinese have little knowledge of this horrific event, and this year, for the first time, authorities banned families from visiting the public cemetery where many victims are buried.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., leftists attempt to rewrite history by drawing false comparisons between rioters and the Chinese students who stood up to a tyrannical regime, and between ICE enforcing immigration law and the CCP’s military opening fire on protesters.

We must not forget the history and horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre. We must teach future generations about the horrors of communism and how precious liberty truly is.

[NASA History Office @NASAhistory]

Before Neil Armstrong could take his historic first steps on the Moon, NASA first had to master the techniques that would let an astronaut safely exit a spacecraft in space.

On June 3, 1965, Gemini IV pilot Ed White made that first step with the first American spacewalk.

[Jan Jekielek @JanJekielek]

For 37 years, over 2,000 images taken by a Chinese state media photographer were hidden in a metal box, surviving brutal purges—until now.

These raw, powerful photos show the courage of the students, the scale of the protests, and the horror of what the Chinese Communist Party did.

Now, The @EpochTimes is making the photos public for the first time. [1/2]

[あるびれお✨ @SPACE_M74]

網状星雲
5/17に元気村でNBZ-ⅡとFS-60CBを使って撮影しました！
超新星残骸らしい姿を撮影できて嬉しい☺️

やはり暗い場所でのナローバンドは一味違いますね〜
たった1時間半でここまで写るとは！
低光害ナローバンド、ハマっちゃいそう
詳細はALTへ

[Erika  @ExploreCosmos_]

The Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbours, appears to be expanding rather than rotating like a stable disk.

A new analysis based on more than a decade of near-infrared observations from the VISTA Survey of the Magellanic Clouds has mapped the proper motions of millions of stars inside the galaxy with much higher precision than before. Instead of showing a clean, ordered rotation pattern, the stellar motions reveal that stars are moving away from the galaxy’s centre, especially along a southeast-northwest direction.

This matters because the Small Magellanic Cloud has long been treated, at least in simplified models, as a small galaxy with some kind of internal rotation. The new map suggests that this picture is too simple. Its internal motion is dominated by tidal disturbance. The main gravitational culprit is the Large Magellanic Cloud, its more massive companion, which has repeatedly interacted with it over billions of years. Those encounters have stretched and distorted the Small Magellanic Cloud, leaving it dynamically out of equilibrium.

The study used a longer observational baseline, around 6 to 11 years, from VISTA data release 7. That longer baseline allowed the researchers to measure stellar proper motions with about three times better precision than previous VMC-based studies. After correcting for the overall motion of the galaxy and for perspective effects, the residual motion map showed clear signs of large-scale expansion. The researchers also found no convincing evidence for normal disk-like rotation once those corrections were applied.

Another important point is that the disturbance is not only visible in the outer regions, where tidal stripping might be expected, but also in the central parts of the Small Magellanic Cloud. That suggests the whole galaxy has been strongly affected by its interaction with the Large Magellanic Cloud. Older red giant stars also show a coherent northward motion away from the centre, which the authors interpret as a possible kinematic fossil of an interaction that happened more than two billion years ago.

The broader implication is that the Small Magellanic Cloud is not a calm nearby dwarf galaxy, but a galaxy being reshaped in real time by gravitational encounters.

Because it is close enough for astronomers to measure individual stellar motions, it becomes a valuable laboratory for studying how small galaxies are disrupted, stretched, and transformed by larger companions. The result also warns that using simple rotating-disk models for disturbed dwarf galaxies can give a misleading picture of their structure and evolution.

👉 https://t.co/cj8NP9yhDj