The wonderful Messier Object M45 (The Seven Sisters, Pleiades). It's famous as the @Subaru_corp logo ("Subaru" is the Japanese name for this cluster!). It is the closest Messier Object to Earth! The bright stars lighten up the gas remanents of their formation.
I've revisited this object after a year of #astrophotography practice, and what a difference a year makes! The left is in Dec 2020 with my DSLR setup, on a tripod outside of Vancouver. The right is with my setup on my balcony in Downtown Vancouver.
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On top of being able to more of the nebula, we can see a lot more detail within the nebula; the striated gas is just stunning!
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Pleiades is an amazing object. It's "only" 450 light years away & is visible in most night skies (only the strongest light pollution hides it). It's earliest depiction is in 1600 BCE by the Unetice culture. Galileo was the 1st to see it through a telescope, & he sketched it here.
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Pleiades has made appearances in Homer's Iliad, the Bible, Sioux oral tradition, and the Qur'an. It's known as the "Makali'l" in Hawaiian, and are part of the Australian Indigenous traditional stories.
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The nine brightest stars are named after Greek Mythology's Pleione and Atlas and their Seven Daughters: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone. I've labelled the stars here.
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@NASAHubble captured an amazing photo by zooming into Merope, and just to the top right you can see the light of the star. Underneath it, an amazing nebula lit up by Merope herself.
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/1 Thread: C'mon @nytimes, you can you please get suicide statistics right?!!
We really need to address the NYT's propensity for not understanding, & worse, poorly communicating suicide statistics. A new article.
Sigh. Here we go again.
/2 (overall, the article a compelling read!)
But In it, we have college campuses reporting suicides, however the #'s are 1, 2, 3... this is not actually abnormal.
Let's zoom in on one: Worcester Polytechnic with 2 (possibly 4 after investigation, according to the NYC).
/3 Worcester Polytechnic has concern because of a cluster of deaths, and I understand that, but we actually have CDC provisional data for Worcester County for 18-22 year-olds.
The 2019-2020 vs 2020-2021 suicide frequencies are NOT different. And they are lower than 2018-2019's.
We can learn from tragedies - even preventable ones. It's important to remember though about hindsight bias, and the "nirvana fallacy." Let's talk about this a little bit.
Minithread time:
/1
Hindsight bias is forgetting the position we were at in the beginning of a decision; we have knowledge that came over time, but at the time we had less knowledge.
"You shouldn't have let your child the house," a police officer reprimands a parent after an accident occurs.
/2
Of course, the knowledge of the accident is where that advice comes from, not the knowledge prior to the accident. Parents let their children leave the house for a whole host of reasons, and sometimes parents THINK they are restricting it but the child leaves anyway.
/3
The CA contrarians like the fearmongering & almost-always-wrong-in-two-months Monica Gandhi ghoulishly used child suicide #'s to advocate for reopening.
As shown, there was *no* unexpected increase of suicides during the yearlong lockdown.
2/ [/1]
When taken as a whole (red - March 2020-Feb 2021 vs blue - March 2019-Feb 2020), the overall increase was not significantly higher (95% CI -7.4% to +46%), though as the pandemic wore on things appear to increase than earlier.
Grey: 2013-2017
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3/ Rates in the 2nd half of the lockdown response in Sept-Feb 2020 are higher than 2019's rates (+2% to +169%, 63%), but it should be noted that this is not significantly higher than 2018, 2017, or 2016's rates.
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THEAD:
What's really "Driving" the mental health crisis in kids?
Lets discuss the article by @hotzthoughts in @sciam, which unfortunately propagates mistakes.
I will say this loudly to the headline writer, however:
"COVID IS NOT DRIVING SOMETHING THAT WAS ALREADY THERE"
/1
The CDC MMWR is quoted, showing an "increase in suicide attempts among people younger than 18." That report combines "non suicidal self injury" with "suicide attempts," which is a huge no-no. On top of this, I have addressed this report and its flaws
While it *IS* important that distress presentations to the ER increased (it is looking from embargoed data that it was jan-may spiking in girls), it is also crucial that this was NOT suicide attempts, or even, as the CDC authors wrongly stated "suspected serious attempts."
/3
TOP LINE:
Full lockdown phase: significant decrease (-15%)
SECOND HEADLINE:
Up but within expected for the remainder.
THIRD HEADLINE:
No change if the year taken in total.
/2 Note: GETH plot (my creation!). The previous months are actually TWO FULL pre-pandemic years (Mar-Feb 18-20), and all rates are standardized for population. Error bars are 95% CI for Proportions. All charts read MAR-FEB to capture a "full pandemic year."
/3 Can we break it down by sex? Sure can!
Boys: same pattern, suicides decreased significantly (-18%!) during the strictest school measures, and increased (nonsignificantly, 13%) during the second school year of the pandemic.