British slang?? 
We used it in Texas when I was growing up.
And how were the Magellanic Clouds?
(Not really clouds, they’re similar to the Milky Way in that they are millions of stars which are visible from rural places…in this case, in the Southern Hemisphere. But the difference is that the “Milky Way” is another band of our own galaxy – just as all the other stars we see are even closer neighbors in it – while the Magellanic Clouds are separate galaxies altogether – smaller companions in our Local Group of galaxies. The only other thing beyond our galaxy you can see with the naked eye is the Andromeda Galaxy, between Casseiopia and the Square of Pegasus – I see it as a faint smudge on dark nights, even sometimes from suburban locations.)
Words travel for free. According to this, it originated in Scotland and Northern England.
The dark band in those images is perhaps the most intriguing part of the image; a series of dark molecular clouds, about 800 light years away, the densest part of which is in the constellation Aquila and is known as the Aquila Rift.
This useful webpage has some interesting graphics of the Milky Way
http://media.skysurvey.org/interactive360/index.html
What’s a “molecular cloud” made of? (I know, Google Is My Friend, but I like hearing it from you folks.)
Latin, actually. In Latin it’s Via Lactia, which literally means “Milky Way”.
True, but the word in Latin is closely related to the word in Greek – not just because they’re both IE languages, but I think it’s even a later borrowing than the proto-Greek/proto-Italic splitting.
Fantastic shot: echo (mushroom cloud light) of urban maelstrom, to reclamation by the placid earth, to supersumption by the stars. Do i have your permission to download it?
Anyone want to take a crack at checking the italicized part?
Epiphany of an event. Other similar examples of cognition/sudden lifting of a screen of thought or misinterpretation are few, but can be shockingly profound.
I once put on Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, which as some of you may know begins with almost imperceptible open fifths, in a mysteriously uncoalescent harmonic space. As I lay back and entered the exploratory zone of my own immersion and creation of (and along with) that space, feeling with my ears the borders of that entrance, I realized after a time that I hadn’t turned on the amplifier and no sound was present.
I think that might be similar.
In New York City, many people–not just Jews–say “futzing around” with exactly the same connotations.
Not “putzing around,” which sometimes non-Jews say in getting at the same word/point, which is not, despite it’s literal meaning that sounds akin to English–“cocking/dicking around”–is weird and never existed.
Nice to know about faff. Now if I only knew what that meant literally, just for laughs. Also futz, come to think of it.
Sure.
I can send you a higher-resolution version if you PM me with your email address.
A molecular cloud is a mass of gas and dust, light years across, with H2 (molecular hydrogen) as the most common molecule, bur also rich in CO (carbon monoxide) and many other molecules, including many organic molecules. The large molecules are rare in these clouds but detectable; the most easily detectable is the CO molecule, which is used as a marker for the extent of these clouds (although TBH I don’t know how quite they do this).
Molecular clouds are also rich in cosmic dust, and are dark and opaque in visible light. However they are much less opaque in infra-red; here’s a small one (Barnard 68) seen in several different wavelengths, showing how infra-red can pass through.
But that is a very small cloud compared to the Aquila rift, which is pretty much impenetrable even to infra-red.
Thank you, eburacum!
Leo – futz literally means “fart”.
(Or am I being whooshed, and you knew that “fuff” means that as well – if indeed it dies literally mean that?)
I get it, now that you mention it.
A friend’s father (an Austrian Jew, if that makes a difference) taught me this when I was fifteen:
Schiller sagt zu Goethe,
Dein pfärtz ist wie ein flöte
Goethe sagt zu Schiller,
Dein pfärtz ist wie ein triller
“Your fart’s like a flute… Your fart’s like a Southeast Asian bird related to the cuckoo.”??
It’s amazing how many people in this thread say they have never or rarely seen the Milky Way. I live in the densely populated southeast of England, which is hardly Dark Sky central, and I can usually see it on a clear night.
Here you go, this is the best 3D map of the milky way I’ve ever seen. Try zooming all the way in and all the way out. It’s an accurate map of the 100,000 nearest stars to us, embedded in a rough map of the whole Milky Way. The play button top left gives a tour.
I love it… and it has probably the best “patience” message I’ve ever seen: “Loading the galaxy – please wait” 
I’m stunned.
Talk about “make a wish.”
I remember this thread fondly for, among other things, the SD posted repeatedly and patiently for me on interpreting the “you are here” issues.
Just found this, which if I checked right wasn’t cited above:
Wiki “Earth’s Location in the Universe”:
A lot of fun stuff in there.
Just saw JKellyMap has gone three years in a cloud of unknowing. A “triller” is the German word for “trill,” in music a rapid alternation of two step-separated notes.
Unless this the first case I’ve ever seen of a zombie being whooshed.
Not a pretty sight.
You should have seen the attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion…