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An artist’s map of the Milky Way galaxy, with a circle 3,000 light years in radius centered on the Sun. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Robert Hurt (SSC-Caltech) / Phil Plait (annotation)
Gaia is a European Space Agency mission that orbits the Sun in a stable position about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Its mission is to measure the positions, motions, colors, and other characteristics of over
nearly two billion stars in the galaxy. That s it. It doesn t specify what kind of star to look at (other than it has to be bright enough to see) or drill down to answer a specific question.
Stardate: 52179.4
Captain’s log. We open with Janeway demoting Paris to ensign and consigning him to the brig for thirty days. Security escorts him there. When they enter the turbolift, it’s Paris who says “Brig,” because the security guards are played by extras and giving them dialogue means having to pay them more.
Neelix brings Paris some food, but isn’t allowed to stay and chat beyond what’s necessary for the delivery of meals. Neelix also brought a padd so Paris can dictate a letter to his father. After several false starts, Paris finally starts to explain what happened.
Stardate: 52179.4
Captain’s log. We open with Janeway demoting Paris to ensign and consigning him to the brig for thirty days. Security escorts him there. When they enter the turbolift, it’s Paris who says “Brig,” because the security guards are played by extras and giving them dialogue means having to pay them more.
Neelix brings Paris some food, but isn’t allowed to stay and chat beyond what’s necessary for the delivery of meals. Neelix also brought a padd so Paris can dictate a letter to his father. After several false starts, Paris finally starts to explain what happened.
After so many years writing about astronomy, I am pleased to report that there are still things going on in the Universe that can make the hair on the back of my stand up.
Let me share a multi-part story with you about dancing dead stars, what strange beast remains after the music stops, and the sometimes explosive result.
Very explosive.
White dwarfs are the leftovers of stars like the Sun after they die. When a star like that runs out of nuclear fuel it swells up into a red giant, blows off its outer layers, and leaves behind only its intensely hot and dense core. This is the white dwarf.
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Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for January 18th, 2021. In today’s article, I finally catch up on a bunch of games I’ve had piled up for review. On top of that, there are several new releases to look at, though none of them are what I would describe as a must-have. We’ve got summaries of them anyway, of course. Finally, we’ve got a healthy list of new sales and all of the outgoing sales to round things out. Let’s get to it!
Mini-Views
Epitaph ($12.99)
Usually the absence of one particular feature isn’t enough to drag a game down all that much, but in the case of