December 2011

SAOImage DS9 screenshot

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Since last spring a group of 23 manuscripts have been used for the first scanning test using the open source FITS format developed by ESA and NASA since the ’70s. Now they’ll proceed to the digitization of the other manuscripts for a total of about eighty thousand.

Doctor Who - The War Machines

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“The War Machines” is the last adventure of the third season of “Doctor Who” classic series which aired in 1966. It’s a four parts adventure written by Ian Stuart Black and directed by Michael Ferguson.

Titan by John Varley

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The novel “Titan” by John Varley was published for the first time in 1979. It won the Locus Award as the best science fiction novel of the year. It’s the first novel of the Gaea trilogy.

A forming star in the Sharpless 2-106 nebula (Image NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

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In February 2011 the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured the extraordinary show of a star that is still forming illuminating the surrounding cloud of hydrogen and now NASA and ESA have published some stunning images of it. This star is part of a nebula known as Sharpless 2-106 (Sh2-106, or abbreviated as S106) because it’s one of those cataloged by astronomer Stewart Sharpless in the ’50s.