Almost Christmas eve

What happens if we see a supernova on Christmas eve? It could happen, the star Betelguse in the constellation Orion is a Red Giant and fluctuates in brightness as if it is flinging off layers of matter. The variability and it’s massive size means astronomers think it might be due to explode in 1000 to 1,000,000 years.

But Betelguse is 642 light years away from us, so it might already have exploded. We wouldn’t know until the light reaches us. Then for a glorious couple of weeks the light would outshine the brightest stars and possibly be visible in daylight.

Supernovas fade after a few weeks, the star stuff is all burnt up or exploding out in a cooling cloud that will eventually stabilise into a nebulous cloud. Examples include the Crab Nebula.

Meanwhile back on Earth because of the date of its imagined eruption, I wonder what the reaction of the population would be? Secular or religious, it would be interesting.

Four weddings and a funeral.

I’ve just watched this film for the first time in about 20 years. In turn comedic, poignant, rude, surprising and life affirming

There is a poem by W H Auden in it “stop all the clocks”, so sad and yet to the point. I felt myself starting to cry again. But it helped.

It’s a film from the early 1990’s and has a strong cast of actors including Hugh Grant as the main star. It follows him through the marriages of his friends and perhaps himself. And the death of a close friend.

If you’ve never watched it I think you will probably enjoy it.

Happy 2024

Wishing you a good new year

With laughter and full of cheer.

May your days be bright

Lit by the sun’s starlight

Have plenty to eat

Savory and sweet

May your dreams come true

For all of you.

Love and peace to the world

As the new year is unfurled.

As Julian of Norwich wrote so many years ago.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Penkhull midnight

An old biro/ digital drawing I did a few years ago of our local church. I think I intended to use it as a christmas card (its several years ago but i think I did print a few off). I can see from it that I drew it out in biro first, but then must have scanned it into photoshop because I can see areas where it seems to have had some flood fill colour. I don’t know if I intended it to have white areas as snow or reflected starlight. I was watching a programme about astronomy last night. It said that a star will become a supernova once a century on average in our galaxy, but there have been none in the Milky Way since the Seventeenth century. Our closest candidate is Betelguese in the constellation Orion. It is a red giant star and sits on the top left hand side of the constellation. It has been dimming recently, which may mean it is shrinking. It might as they said, not explode for a million years, or it might become a Supernova tomorrow. No one can tell. But when it does it will be a very bright object in the sky. It might even look like this.