Starship Asterisk*

Ann wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2020 3:50 pm

TheZuke! wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:47 pm Picking chokecherries was a common activity in my childhood, which lead to chokecherry syrup on pancakes.
(Not to be confused with Choke Berries, a different plant)

Chokecherries were sometimes used in making pemmican.
(A friend once told me, "If you are offered some pemmican, refuse it!" Apparently she had tried some...)

Chokecherry or chokegrape?

Ann

TheZuke! wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:47 pm Picking chokecherries was a common activity in my childhood, which lead to chokecherry syrup on pancakes.
(Not to be confused with Choke Berries, a different plant)

Chokecherries were sometimes used in making pemmican.
(A friend once told me, "If you are offered some pemmican, refuse it!" Apparently she had tried some...)

Shonkin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 5:34 pm
Could it be a clump of chokecherries?

• Can you say "Sacagawea's clump of chokecherries" six times fast?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_virginiana wrote:
<<Chokecherry is a suckering shrub or small tree growing to 1–6 m tall. The wild chokecherry is often considered a pest, as it is a host for the tent caterpillar, a threat to other fruit plants. However, there are more appreciated cultivars of the chokecherry. 'Canada Red' or 'Schubert' has leaves that mature to purple and turn orange and red in the autumn. Research at the University of Saskatchewan seeks to find and create new cultivars to increase production and processing. In 2007, Governor John Hoeven signed a bill naming the chokecherry the official fruit of the state of North Dakota, in part because its remains have been found at more archeological sites in the Dakotas than anywhere else. Chokecherry is also used to craft wine in the western United States, mainly in the Dakotas and Utah, as well as in Manitoba, Canada

For many Native American tribes of the Northern Rockies, Northern Plains, and boreal forest region of Canada and the United States, chokecherries are the most important fruit in their traditional diets and are part of pemmican, a staple traditional food. The bark of chokecherry root is made into an asperous-textured concoction used to ward off or treat colds, fever and stomach maladies by Native Americans. The inner bark of the chokecherry, as well as red osier dogwood, or alder, is also used by some tribes in ceremonial smoking mixtures, known as kinnikinnick. The chokecherry fruit can be used to make jam or syrup, but the bitter nature of the fruit requires sugar to sweeten the preserves. Sacagawea was eating choke cherries when she was discovered by Lewis and Clark. The Plains Indians pound up the whole fruits—including the toxic pits—into a mortar, from which they made sun-baked cakes.

Chokecherry is toxic to horses, moose, cattle, goats, deer, and other animals with segmented stomachs (rumens), especially after the leaves have wilted (such as after a frost or after branches have been broken) because wilting releases cyanide and makes the plant sweet. Symptoms of a horse that has been poisoned include heavy breathing, agitation, and weakness..>>

Stephen_India wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 4:59 pm It’s beautiful but the scale of the image doesn’t suit my eyes, i mean the wide filed of the foreground and the size of Pleiades in relation to it and with the moon and Venus is odd to me. I might be wrong too.

geoffrey.landis wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:36 pm There's no distinct dividing line between a manipulated image and an unmanipulated image-- pretty much all the images have some processing-- but this one could reasonably be more accurately described as "a photo of Venus and the moon at twilight, onto which was photoshopped an image of the Pleiades".

geoffrey.landis wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:20 pm

The featured image captured this cosmic triangle with a series of exposures taken from the same camera over 70 minutes

Wait, what? Objects in the sky move at fifteen degrees an hour. The frame of the picture is maybe five degrees or so. If the picture took seventy minutes to take, nothing in the image at the beginning of the series of exposures was still there at the end except for the ground and trees.

The featured image captured this cosmic triangle with a series of exposures taken from the same camera over 70 minutes

Guest wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 5:44 am
Not Canadian, but Idaho is just across the border... and that looks like a clump of aspen to me. I'd be happy to be corrected.

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:40 pm
Maybe... but aspens usually grow straight and are free of low branches, except when very young. This looks more like a cottonwood stand to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betula_papyrifera wrote:
Betula papyrifera (paper birch, also known as (American) white birch and canoe birch) is a short-lived species of birch native to northern North America. Paper birch is named for the tree's thin white bark, which often peels in paper like layers from the trunk. Paper birch is often one of the first species to colonize a burned area within the northern latitudes, and is an important species for moose browsing. The wood is often used for pulpwood and firewood.

Lacy Parcell wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:42 pm
The title should have been, A Cosmic Rectangle, as Earth is also in the image.

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Cosmic wrote:
cosmic (adj.) 1640s, "worldly, of this world," a sense now obsolete, from Latinized form of Greek kosmikos "worldly, earthly, of the world," from kosmos "world-order, world." Cosmical "related to the earth" is attested from 1580s. Modern sense of "of or pertaining to the universe," especially as conceived as subject to a harmonious system of laws, is from 1846. Meaning "related to or dealing with the cosmos, forming part of the material universe beyond the earth or the solar system" is from 1871. In reference to inconceivably vast space or protracted time, from 1874.
.........................................................
cosmos (n.) c. 1200, "the universe, the world" (but not popular until 1848, when it was taken as the English equivalent to Humboldt's Kosmos in translations from German), from Latinized form of Greek kosmos "order, good order, orderly arrangement," a word with several main senses rooted in those notions: The verb kosmein meant generally "to dispose, prepare," but especially "to order and arrange (troops for battle), to set (an army) in array;" also "to establish (a government or regime);" "to deck, adorn, equip, dress" (especially of women). Thus kosmos had an important secondary sense of "ornaments of a woman's dress, decoration" (compare kosmokomes "dressing the hair," and cosmetic) as well as "the universe, the world." Pythagoras is said to have been the first to apply this word to "the universe," perhaps originally meaning "the starry firmament," but it later was extended to the whole physical world, including the earth. For specific reference to "the world of people," the classical phrase was he oikoumene (ge) "the inhabited (earth)." Septuagint uses both kosmos and oikoumene.

Guest wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 5:44 am Not Canadian, but Idaho is just across the border... and that looks like a clump of aspen to me. I'd be happy to be corrected.

The neatest thing about aspen (and other relatives) is that they are clonal - each tree sends up shoots from its roots, so what starts from one seedling can become a cluster (like this), a grove of scores of trees, or even a whole forest. In the Fall each clone turns color all at the same time, and an aspen-covered mountain in the distance becomes a tapestry of patches in shades of green, yellow and orange. Some clonal clusters of aspen apparently date back to the Ice Age.

The featured image captured this cosmic triangle with a series of exposures taken from the same camera over 70 minutes