M57: The Ring Nebula
Explanation: It looks like a ring on the sky. Hundreds of years ago astronomers noticed a nebula with a most unusual shape. Now known as M57 or NGC 6720, the gas cloud became popularly known as the Ring Nebula. It is now known to be a planetary nebula, a gas cloud emitted at the end of a Sun-like star's existence. As one of the brightest planetary nebula on the sky, the Ring Nebula can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation of Lyra. The Ring Nebula lies about 4,000 light years away, and is roughly 500 times the diameter of our Solar System. In this picture by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998, dust filaments and globules are visible far from the central star. This helps indicate that the Ring Nebula is not spherical, but cylindrical.
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Kassi is sitting in the privacy walls of her childhood friend, Agathia. Here is the heart of their discussion.
“I am on the taskforce to inspect the bridge once we settle on a design,” said Agathia. “We have no choice but wood and stone.”
“I am just glad we are doing something. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought it before.”
“Some of us have,” replied Agathia, “Bridge building does not appear practical. For one reason we don’t know how deep the River is. Nor how wide. This is a symbolic venture, that is what Mother likes, and we are a part of it. The gods may think us crazy, but there is a chance, like Mother says, that they do not know who we are any more than we do.” She smiled her petite and warm smile. “This is what makes it such gorgeous fun.”
She is ridiculous, thought Kassi. Even the stone and wood here is not Earth real, no more real than we are. We probably are as crazy as loons. I’m no god but I don’t think about animals being crazy. They are just dumb eccentric animals. Eccentric, unless the animal is a god in disguise, and gods we are not.
“What are you thinking about, Kassi?”
“What the River is made of. We talk about how deep and how wide, but what of its composition.”
“It’s drinkable and has no salty taste but wood does not float.”
“I know, but how do we swim through it coming here?”
“I don’t know. People say we arrive as skull and backbone to the tailbone. No one knows for sure. We just arrive.”
“Doesn’t this bother you, Aggie?”
“You are the only one who calls me that. Even mother doesn’t call me that any more.”
“I was your first friend.”
“And I likewise.” Why aren’t we content, thought Agathia. People dreamed of an afterlife with their friends. What more would anyone want? Turns out, we want to go home to at least listen to our grandchildren making it through the world.
***
Marios, Thales and Salamon stood above the shoreline staring down at the vast sea of a river, watching piles of stone and wood being placed along the edge and back toward the city. Eleusis Street ended. nearly splitting the beautifully crescent-shaped beach in half. Seven hundred yards of beach east and five hundred yards of beach west each ended with rocky tower-like precipices. The east rocky crag sat about a thousand feet high two thousand feet out and the west river cliff measured fifteen hundred feet high and only extended out a thousand feet. Natural gate towers that would welcome hordes of ships, their sailors and cargo on Earth sat desolate, waiting for the eventual incoming who arrived from the inlet community pools just north of the river’s muddy sands rather than from the center of the Styx to the south.
“It is up to us to make this deception work,” asserted, Marios whose ruggedly manly Greek face showed signs of a resolute glumness.
“Who’s deception, that’s the point?” declared Salamon in a shovel face of inner irony. I would say we are building our own grave, he considered, but then where would we be?
Thales alone said nothing and shook his somber head sideways then towards the eerie leeward side of the hill above the town. Such is the breeze that blows to our west off passed Stone Hill and the pit of Tartarus beyond, the place where the rebel gods were thrown by mighty Zeus for nine years, or so it is rumored. Never have we heard a word from them. Who knows what nine years is to a god? One may last more earth years than the stars in the heavens can count. O to have bones again, and muscle for their working. I could, on a good day kill a hundred men in battle and that would be the end to it.
But Here we move against the gods and doom the very race of our Mother who is in ultimate charge. We are as Demeter taking Persephone to Hades. So sad will we be when this rebellion is completed. This Place of the Dead will become the winter of minds and hearts. Our very center, our souls, will shiver endlessly. And, I am mad to have such a desire to built a real bridge not this sham. We should walk down into the greatest of rivers, Styx and build from the base up a mighty stone and wood path all the way Home. Stone and wood and green grass for our very feet to walk on along the way to the delight of real air, earth fresh, that even with hope we can never breath again. How to live with dignity while Dead, that is the question, but I cannot bring myself to ask it even among my friends.
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