Good morning.

It’s a mostly sunny Labor Day ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of sixty-seven.

One  has a chance, with simply a small telescope or binoculars, to see a supernova from one’s backyard:

Starting this weekend, the closest supernova found in at least 25 years will be visible from your backyard with just binoculars or a small telescope. The exploding white dwarf star is currently brightening in the Pinwheel Galaxy, nestled, from our perspective, within the Big Dipper.

Good morning.

It’s a hot and rainy Friday in store for Whitewater, with a high of ninety-one, and scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon.

The Wisconsin Historical Society writes that, on this day in 1862, Wisconsin residents were in the grip of an ‘Indian Scare’ —

On this evening, Manitowoc settlers were awakened to the cry of “Indians are coming.” Messengers on horseback arrived from the Rapids, Branch, Kellnersville, and other nearby communities, announcing that Indians were burning everything in their path, starting what was known as the “Indian Scare of 1862.” Fire and church bells gave warning to frightened residents.

Over the next few days, people from the surrounding areas fled to Manitowoc and other city centers. Ox carts were loaded with women and children carrying their most valuable belongings. Men arrived with guns, axes, and pitchforks, anything with which to defend themselves and their community.

A company of recruits from the Wisconsin 26th Regiment formed themselves into two scouting units, both of which returned to report that there was no threat of an Indian attack. Even after the excitement had subsided, many frightened farm families could not be persuaded to return home. [Source: Manitowoc County, Wisconsin Genealogy]

Had they thought carefully, these Wisconsinites would have seen that the real threat to Wisconsin, and all America, lay elsewhere.

Good morning.

It’s a warm day ahead for Whitewater: sunny and ninety-one degrees.

For students across the city, school begins today.  Best wishes for a year of accomplishment and adventure.

Using images from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have created an animation of early stellar formation:

Using 14 years’ worth of Hubble Space Telescope images, astronomers have animated the chaos inside the supersonic jets of newborn stars.

Hubble took still photographs of the jets from 1994 through 2008, and animators used image-morphing models to create seamless videos that put the jets into motion….

High-speed jets shoot out of distant pulsars, black holes and other objects across the universe, but the closest ones come from newborn stars within the Milky Way some 1,350 light-years away. George Herbig and Guillermo Haro first spotted these nearby jets in the 1950s, lending them the name Herbig-Haro objects. Astronomers have since discovered roughly 400 of them, and more than 100,000 likely exist in the Milky Way alone.

Beautiful and fascinating.

Good morning.

It’s a partly sunny day for Whitewater today, with highs in the lower eighties.

The key to alternative fuels from plants may be microbes like those in pandas’ stomachs.  That’s because Pooping Pandas May Make Better Biofuels:

“We’re taking refuse — panda poop and the microbes that live there — and trying to break down another form of refuse,” says Ashli Brown, a biochemist at Mississippi State University. Brown described her team’s results on August 29 at a meeting in Denver of the American Chemical Society.

Pandas eat bamboo almost exclusively, but don’t have a multichambered stomach like cows to help digest all those plants. It’s basically in one end and out the other, and “anything residing there to break down woody material has to be very efficient,” says Candace Williams, a graduate student on Brown’s team.

Here’s one of the Memphis Zoo pandas that were the particular subject of the study: