Explanation: In 1999, Leonids Meteor Shower came to an impressive crescendo. Observers in Europe saw a sharp peak in the number of meteors visible around 0210 UTC during the early morning hours of November 18. Meteor counts then exceeded 1000 per hour - the minimum needed to define a true meteor storm. At other times and from other locations around the world, observers typically reported respectable rates of between 30 and 100 meteors per hour. This photograph is a 20-minute exposure ending just before the main Leonids peak began. Visible are at least five Leonidmeteors streaking high above the Torre de la Guaita, an observation tower used during the 12th century in Girona, Spain. Over the next few nights, the Geminids are expected to put on the best meteor show of this year.
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
owlice wrote:I think not all the streaks are Leonids.
I believe most or all of the streaks are Leonids. The discrepancy in count comes from the fact that this is a repeat APOD (as pointed out by Art). In the original image, only five meteors were apparent. But this latest image has been reprocessed, and now shows much more detail. Unfortunately, the caption wasn't reprocessed along with the image.
Chris
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Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
'Crescendo' does not mean 'climax'. It is a musical term, taken from the Italian, meaning 'growing'. Never use a long word when a short one will do, especially if you are not certain what it means.
<<LEONID Ilyich Brezhnev was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, presiding over the country from 1964 his death in 1982. His 18-year term was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in length. During Brezhnev's rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically, in part because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support the fragile Marxist government located there. His tenure as leader has often been criticized for marking the beginning of a period of economic stagnation, overlooking serious economic problems which eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.>>
Lang wrote:'Crescendo' does not mean 'climax'. It is a musical term, taken from the Italian, meaning 'growing'. Never use a long word when a short one will do, especially if you are not certain what it means.
Amongst its other meanings, "crescendo" does indeed mean "climax". APOD captions are intended to be fun to read, and often make use of slightly poetic word usage. Literature would be very boring indeed if authors always observed the advice to use the shortest of available words for a given meaning!
IMO, "crescendo" is precisely the word to use here, conveying as it does both the rise in activity as well as the peak (much better than "climax"). And as anybody who has ever observed a meteor storm is likely to agree, describing it in terms associated with music is very suitable.
Chris
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Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
Lang wrote:'Crescendo' does not mean 'climax'. It is a musical term, taken from the Italian, meaning 'growing'. Never use a long word when a short one will do, especially if you are not certain what it means.
Amongst its other meanings, "crescendo" does indeed mean "climax". APOD captions are intended to be fun to read, and often make use of slightly poetic word usage. Literature would be very boring indeed if authors always observed the advice to use the shortest of available words for a given meaning!
IMO, "crescendo" is precisely the word to use here, conveying as it does both the rise in activity as well as the peak (much better than "climax"). And as anybody who has ever observed a meteor storm is likely to agree, describing it in terms associated with music is very suitable.
'Crescendo' means 'growing', like it or not. In other words, the 'climax' meaning is an insidious error that is becoming more and more prevalent. And 'crescendo', in its correct meaning, is not the right word at all. The phrase was 'came to an impressive crescendo'. The rise in activity is expressed by the 'came to'. The only word that could possibly be used there is 'climax'. And Merriam-Webster has always been guilty of trying to legitimise errors.
Chris Peterson wrote:
Amongst its other meanings, "crescendo" does indeed mean "climax". APOD captions are intended to be fun to read, and often make use of slightly poetic word usage. Literature would be very boring indeed if authors always observed the advice to use the shortest of available words for a given meaning!
IMO, "crescendo" is precisely the word to use here, conveying as it does both the rise in activity as well as the peak (much better than "climax"). And as anybody who has ever observed a meteor storm is likely to agree, describing it in terms associated with music is very suitable.
'Crescendo' means 'growing', like it or not. In other words, the 'climax' meaning is an insidious error that is becoming more and more prevalent. And 'crescendo', in its correct meaning, is not the right word at all. The phrase was 'came to an impressive crescendo'. The rise in activity is expressed by the 'came to'. The only word that could possibly be used there is 'climax'. And Merriam-Webster has always been guilty of trying to legitimise errors.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Kerst and Krehbiel — Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as revealed 1773
One can see the reeling and trembling, one can see the heaving breast which is illustrated by a CRESCENDO;
one hears the lispings and sighs expressed by the muted violins with flute in unison.
Honoré de Balzac — Eugenie Grandet. 1824
From time to time the young the heiress glanced furtively at her cousin, and
the banker's wife easily detected a CRESCENDO of surprise and curiosity in her mind.
From Dunstable I rolled away into a CRESCENDO of similar impressions.
Jack London — Jerry of the Islands. 1896
With a quick jerk, cataleptically, his nose pointed to the zenith, his mouth opened, and a flood of sound poured forth, running swiftly upward in CRESCENDO and slowly falling as it died away.
Stewart Edward White — The Land of Footprints. 1909
With a sudden CRESCENDO the music stopped.
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G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936). The Man Who Was Thursday. 1908.
Chapter V. The Feast of Fear
Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the most baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square face clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name of Bull. He had that combination of savoir-faire with a sort of well-groomed coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. He carried his fine clothes with confidence rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set smile. There was nothing whatever odd about him, except that he wore a pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It may have been merely a CRESCENDO of nervous fancy that had gone before, but those black discs were dreadful to Syme; they reminded him of half-remembered ugly tales, of some story about pennies being put on the eyes of the dead. Syme’s eye always caught the black glasses and the blind grin. Had the dying Professor worn them, or even the pale Secretary, they would have been appropriate. But on the younger and grosser man they seemed only an enigma. They took away the key of the face. You could not tell what his smile or his gravity meant. Partly from this, and partly because he had a vulgar virility wanting in most of the others it seemed to Syme that he might be the wickedest of all those wicked men.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise. 1920.
BOOK ONE The Romantic Egotist : CHAPTER 2 Spires and Gargoyles
It was a clear night and the exhilaration of the road went to Amory's head. He had the ghost of two stanzas of a poem forming in his mind....
So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life stirred as it went by.... As the still ocean paths before the shark in starred and glittering waterways, beauty-high, the moon-swathed trees divided, pair on pair, while flapping nightbirds cried across the air....
A moment by an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a yellow moon—then silence, where CRESCENDO laughter fades ... the car swung out again to the winds of June, mellowed the shadows where the distance grew, then crushed the yellow shadows into blue....
They jolted to a stop, and Amory peered up, startled. A woman was standing beside the road, talking to Alec at the wheel. Afterward he remembered the harpy effect that her old kimono gave her, and the cracked hollowness of her voice as she spoke: "You Princeton boys?"
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Art "Saturday (going by the name of Bull)" Neuendorffer
Lang wrote:'Crescendo' means 'growing', like it or not. In other words, the 'climax' meaning is an insidious error that is becoming more and more prevalent. And 'crescendo', in its correct meaning, is not the right word at all. The phrase was 'came to an impressive crescendo'. The rise in activity is expressed by the 'came to'. The only word that could possibly be used there is 'climax'. And Merriam-Webster has always been guilty of trying to legitimise errors.
The same meaning is given in the OED. (Also in the OED, the musical usage "reaching a crescendo" is given as an example, meaning a musical climax.) In the English language, correct usage is determined by one thing: usage. If you want to worry about etymology or original meaning, practically every word has "erroneous" meanings.
People use "crescendo" to mean "climax", and because they do, the usage is correct. It's as simple as that. If you don't like that, don't use it that way yourself. But by any objective standard of English usage, the term was used correctly in the APOD.
Chris
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Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
I really hate to ruin your fine nitpicking, guys (okay, no I don't), BUT...
The APOD image was taken BEFORE the highest rate of observed meteors. The caption clearly says that the meteor count was rising when this photo was taken, hence the usage was quite appropriate by anyone's definition. Though you could argue that the first sentence could be taken to apply to something other than the image itself, the prefix "Explanation:" says that it is describing THIS photo.
Explanation:...
This photograph is a 20-minute exposure ending just before the main Leonids peak began.
Eye hart the picher cuz it show the komits good. I c the big dipper konstillashin 2 and that is kul. Hop 2 c a komit storm lik that 2. W my luk it wud b wen it is all ovr, i.e. the diminuendo. Will tell my studints 2 watch next komit storm so thay lern komits and astrology and konstillashins.
Leonids Above Torre de la Guaita
head of Leo in (blue & red stars).
