Obama's speach to UN / SEPT 28 2015

Excerpts from Obama's speach:

"We, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion. We cannot look backwards," he said. "We live in an integrated world, one in which we all have a stake in each other's success. We cannot turn back those forces of integration."

"A politics and solidarity that depend on demonizing others, that draws on religious sectarianism or narrow tribalism or jingoism may at times look like strength in the moment, but over time its weakness will be exposed. And history tells us that the dark forces unleashed by this type of politics surely makes all of us less secure. Our world has been there before. We gain nothing from going back.
Instead, I believe that we must go forward in pursuit of our ideals, not abandon them at this critical time. We must give expression to our best hopes, not our deepest fears. This institution was founded because men and women who came before us had the foresight to know that our nations are more secure when we uphold basic laws and basic norms, and pursue a path of cooperation over conflict. And strong nations, above all, have a responsibility to uphold this international order."

... "in the old ways of thinking, the plight of the powerless, the plight of refugees, the plight of the marginalized did not matter. They were on the periphery of the world’s concerns. Today, our concern for them is driven not just by conscience, but should also be drive by self-interest. For helping people who have been pushed to the margins of our world is not mere charity, it is a matter of collective security."

"To believe in the dignity of every individual, to believe we can bridge our differences, and choose cooperation over conflict -- that is not weakness, that is strength. (Applause.) It is a practical necessity in this interconnected world"

"we are called upon to offer a different type of leadership -- leadership strong enough to recognize that nations share common interests and people share a common humanity, and, yes, there are certain ideas and principles that are universal."


Full text:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/president-obama-un-speech-transcript-full-text-video-214152

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6oxByE_lEU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/obama-talk-syria-isis-during-u-n-address-n434816

http://abcnews.go.com/US/president-obama-decries-support-syrias-assad/story?id=34100522

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/27/politics/obama-un-general-assembly/

Andromeda,our nearest neighbor galaxy, in all its glory!

Jaw-dropping Andromeda galaxy photo comprises 37 hours of exposure, originally appeared on CNET.com
This image was taken from earth by a pair of "backyard" astrophotographers who collaborated to produce a stunning image of our nearest galactic neighbour.www.cnet.com

Michelle Starr
September 24, 2015


It has been the focus of a lot of attention. Its proximity makes it brilliant for studying spiral galaxy construction, which helps understand our own spiral galaxy. Space telescopes such as the Hubble and the Spitzer have spent a lot of time photographing it, and we've seen it in many forms: infrared, false-colour composite, even enormously high-resolution at 1.5 billion pixels.
the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that Andromeda contains one trillion stars 1,000,000,000,000 =10^12
: at least twice the number of stars in the Milky Way, which is estimated to be 200–400 billion.

We can't, for obvious reasons, take photos of our own Milky Way galaxy within which we are embedded.
Luckily, our closest major galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, at 2.5 million light-years away in the constellation of Andromeda, 220,000 light years across, it is the largest galaxy of the Local Group,
The image you see here, showing the Andromeda Galaxy in visible light, was captured and processed by two astrophotographers right here on Earth, US-based David Lane and Finland-based J-P Metsavainio.
Using a STL-11000M, 35mm format, 11-megapixel CCD Camera by SBIG coupled with a William Optics Gran Turismo 81 telescope, data collection was Lane's contribution. For 37 hours (non-consecutive), he trained camera and telescope at the tiny section of sky wherein the Andromeda Galaxy lies. He shot 18 hours of visible light exposure, one hour through a hydrogen alpha filter to pick out ionised hydrogen details and six hours each with a red, green and blue filter.

The raw images obtained from these exposures were then sent to Metsavainio, who corrected the optical distortion caused by the telescope using CCDStack 2software. He then combined the images and adjusted the levels and curves using PhotoShop CS3. This is similar to the processing applied to images obtained from space telescopes.The resulting image shows Andromeda in all her glory.



The Andromeda Galaxy(also known as Messier 31)is a lot bigger than the Milky Way. It contains around a trillion stars, compared with the Milky Way's estimated 200 billion to 400 billion stars. It also measures around 220,000 light-years in diameter, compared with the Milky Way's 100,000 light-years.
The Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to be 1.5×1012 solar masses,[7] while the mass of the Milky Way is estimated to be 8.5×1011 solar masses.

Because it's so big and so close, it's one of the brightest Messier objects in the night sky and can be seen with the naked eye on a moonless night from a dark location.

Here's its size relative to the moon as seen from Earth. Given that it's so much farther away, you can start to get some idea of how massive it is.Fun fact: The Andromeda Galaxy is moving through space at a rate of around 400,000 kph (250,000 mph)... directly toward the Milky Way. In roughly four billion years, the two are going to meet in a galactic collision of epic proportions, and probably merge into a giant super-galaxy.

Politics of fear

• 

staggering number of refugees confined to concentration camps

Humanitarian catastrophe:
To understand the sheer scale of the Syrian refugee situation, here's a picture of a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan.

There are another 2 million refugees in Turkey!

Many are escaping the oppressive conditions of tbese camps in a desperate flight to Europe, the land of hope!


Europe overwhelmed by asylum seekers