Muscovite | KAl2(AlSi3O10)(OH)2

Galileo’s sketches from Sidereus Nuncius (1610), the first published scientific work based on observations made through a telescope

 Hey, to you sci-fi/fantasy writers out there (and maybe some others, but this is mainly for things that can’t really be researched irl), if you want to write a character who is a driven, passionate expert on something, don’t write about them rambling indifferently about some boring, mundane part of it. Give them a deep, intense hatred of some oddly specific wow-I-did-not-even-know-that-was-a-thing-and-it-would-have-never-occurred-to-me-that-it’s-a-bad-thing thing they’ll gladly rant about.

 Write a dragon rider who really fucking hates it when a dragon is trained to bow while being reined. A space ship engineer who is pissed off when perfectly good antimatter ship has been adapted to run on neutral matter. A historian who is still not over the massive failures of a general who lost a specific battle 300 years before she was born.

 The guy currently giving us a series of lectures on the restoration of historical buildings really, really hates polymer paint. At the artisan school our stained glass teacher really hated this one specific Belgian artist - we never really figured out what did that guy even do, but he’s been dead for over 200 years and our teacher was glad that at least he’s dead.

 Experts don’t just know things you’ve never thought about. They’ve got strong opinions about it.

Luxembourg, October 2015

“When I walk into a church, I only see paintings of white angels. Why?“ - Eartha Kitt 

Slieveanorra Forest by jonas andersson

Hand massages from baby trash pandas are the BEST 

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A skier encountering a highly territorial lemming on the slopes 

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Horses running in the snow

Once, the sky was full of stories. Ancient cultures filled the heavens with heroes and monsters, and spent nights telling epics and memorizing patterns in the stars.

These days, the stars are a little less familiar. Our skies are full of light pollution and, usually, obscured by a sturdy roof. But if you can get away from the city lights, you can still find a handful of the 88 officially recognized constellations with the help of this video guide, which allows you to look around in 360 degrees, mimicking the actual experience of stargazing.

How To Find The Summer Constellations (360° Video)

Video: NPR’s Skunk Bear