Black holes of cyberspace

Here is the sky scene for this evening, taken from page 15 of Astronomical Calendar 2022:

The scene is almost warmed by friction, as the crescent Moon mingles with the innermost and outermost of the classical planets. We have to wait till midnight of a cold night if we want to see the rising of Virgo and the other stars of spring and with them an excuse to mention the monster black hole in the heart of the Virgo cloud of galaxies.

There was an old man called Michael Finnigan,
He logged out and couldn’t log innnigin,
Lost his password, had to beginnigin,
Poor old Michael Finnigan. Beginnigin…

You may well have had to struggle with the “Forgot password” bogey, as I did yesterday. The original of the ditty, as you probably know, is

There was an old man called Michael Finnigan,
He grew whiskers on his chinnigin,
The wind came out and blew them innigin,
Poor old Michael Finnigan. Beginnigin:
There-was-an-old-man-called-Michael-Finnigan…
(Repeat, faster.)

One of my party tricks was to sing this at relentlessly increasing speed until each line took less than a second; the syllables, I swear, were present, but had disappeared into a phonetic black hole.

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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format.  You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.  One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge.  Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it.  On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers).  Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.

Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing  it.  If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.

This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.