BEG FOR A BOILERMAN"S JOB [EXPANDED]

 The book that inspired this post is "Maxims and Instructions for the Boiler Room" by N. Hawkins, copyrighted 1897 to 1903. That's roughly 115 years ago when earthy, gritty, beer-drinking eccentrics dominated the field and were fiercely proud of what they did for a living. The author's enthusiasm is infectious. Spend only an hour or two with the book and you'll want to drop what you're doing and beg for a job on the nearest boiler.

He starts by paying homage to the great boiler men of the past: Evans, Stephenson and Robert Fulton. Stephenson is especially interesting because he was illiterate til he was 18 and some of his inventions were presumed to be stolen because he had such a gruff exterior.

Hawkins begins his book by explaining what goes through his mind when he arrives at the shop, smells the air, and looks around:

That's beautiful, isn' it? Few things are more interesting in print than a man explaining his passion for his work. Imagine what Shakespeare or Eugene O'Neil could have done with raw material like this!

I guess I don't have room to discuss another unusual book I've come across: Wernher Von Braun's "Mars Project." The book was published in 1948 and outlines Von Braun's dream of going to Mars and back with 4 - 6 V2 type rockets lashed together. The trip would take 9 months each way with only a small time spent on the planet's surface.

If you've never heard of this it may be because Von Braun believed an Earth-orbiting space station had to be built first, and he was talked out of that by a young American engineer from the Grumman company.

NEW ASTRONOMICAL PHOTOS 2014

Here's two photos taken by the Curiosity Rover on Mars. What are those small stones on the ground? One is a ball and the others are star patterns of some sort.

Above is a picture of the four habitable moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It's not impossible that life may be found on these worlds, though in the case of Titan it would have to be life that could exist in liquid methane.

If you're surprised to see Ganymede on that list, that's because interior seas have recently been detected there.

 Here's (above) surface detail on the Comet Churyumov-Gerisimenko. The Rosetta probe continues to map it in an attempt to find a suitable spot for its lander. This picture was taken only a few weeks ago.

 Hubble took this picture (above) of the Bubble Nebula. It looks tiny in this photo but actually it's immense. The bubble you see is 10 light years in diameter and was ejected from a giant star that's visible inside the nebula.

Here's (above) a galaxy that's visible with the naked eye. It's a little galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. It's in the process of colliding with our own galaxy, as is its  namesake, The Large Magellanic Cloud (not visible here). Our galaxy is larger and older than many and has likely absorbed other galaxies in the past. Maybe that's how the Milky Way got the bar in the middle of the pinwheel.

I never heard of this (above) til recently but evidently it's something enthususiasts have known about for a long time: the Zodiacal Light. It's dim but you can see it with the naked eye on an unusually clear night. It's a disc of dust that surrounds the sun on the same plane as most planets and asteroids. We see it edgewise because we're on the same plane.

The Milky Way has recently been identified as a member of a cluster of thousands of galaxies called The Laniakea Supercluster. That's a computer generated image of it above. The white dots in the green areas are all galaxies. The wispy white lines track the paths of galaxies toward Laniakea's center.

White dots outside the orange line belong to other super clusters, even though the picture makes it appear that they belong with us. I have a feeling there's an interesting story behind that.