The problem isn’t really Farage saying this. It’s tens of thousands of people hearing it and thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s what we need.’

I imagine if you look closely enough, you’ll find a Republican who’s making a profit from this.

Planetary nebulae are short lived, dispersing in a few thousand years - the blink of an eye in the life of a star. Their dust makes up a large proportion of the dust clouds that coalesce into new planets around new stars.

Both pictures taken by me in Scotland in 2020.

Interactions with radiation from the star, with its magnetic field, and with surrounding dust and gas can shape these nebulae in complex ways. Here, for example, is the Crescent Nebula.

They were given the name ‘planetary nebulae’, but they are far larger than planets. They are created late in the life of a star, as it blows off shells of dust created in fusion reactions over millions of years.

Today’s #MessierMonday object is M-27, the Dumbbell Nebula.

As telescopes improved in the 19thC, astronomers classified objects into planets and moons, stars and clusters, clouds of dust, and began to think about galaxies. But there was a group of objects like M-27 that they didn’t understand.

For most of my medical career, pancreatic cancer had a 5 year survival of 5-10%. For the current US administration to cut funding for mRNA vaccine research is staggeringly stupid.

A month on from my previous sunset photo. Venus is moving on around her orbit and is closer to the horizon. Beautiful earthlight shines on the moon.

Sunday School: JOIN VENTURE - The path back to EU membership

The puppies and I were joined on my morning walk by @sturdyalex.bsky.social and @pimlicat.bsky.social. Grown up, intelligent, rational discussion - three characteristics that are increasingly rare.

open.spotify.com/episode/62Vg...

A great many countries could learn from Spain.

(But 15% was Betamax …)

Good morning from Charente.

The story on the website showed BBC journalism at its worst. ‘Some’ asylum seekers. How many? What percentage of the total? Without that information, this is just anecdotal and sensationalist.

Even after several books, I still love the moment when I get a physical copy of my latest. It may be the last I write alone; the next two will be collaborations with my brilliant and very talented daughter Lottie Taylor.

A lovely evening here in Charente.

I’m sure His Holiness would agree that we are a broad church!

To every doctor, lawyer, academic etc. who has been told how to do your job by a complete idiot: we can now welcome the Pope to our club.

I highly recommend this book. Excellent writing by an expert in the field.

There’s a bonus object in this image. At 5 o’clock from the cluster, about 2/3 to the edge of the image, there’s a distant galaxy, about 30M light-years away.

I took this photo in the autumn of 2019 in Scotland.

Indeed, the stars are so close together that their gravitational fields sometimes interact, tearing chunks of gas from each other and creating short-lived blue stars, some of which are visible in this image.

The cluster is about 150 light-years in diameter and 25k light-years from us. It contains about 300,000 stars, at least 100x closer to each other than our sun is to its stellar neighbours.

#MessierMonday. Today I present M-13, the Hercules Globular Cluster. On a moonless night, it’s just about at the limit of my eyesight, so younger eyes than mine should be able to see it; it’s easily seen with the aid of binoculars.

The Pope should invite Trump to visit him in Canossa. And should then keep him waiting. Historians would laugh their heads off.

Can you imagine trying to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement with the current US administration in the background?

Lovely. For an extra bit of nerd knowledge, the bright ‘star’ to the left of centre in 1, 2, and 4 is Jupiter.

Did the same person who briefed Andrew Windsor advise her?

Phonetic Punctuation - Voice

open.spotify.com/track/5NyjVC...

Take a few minutes to listen to this, even if you have already heard it. We have tears of laughter streaming down our faces.

Yes, they’re in the layer below the socks. Along with the vital irreplaceable components from Ikea packs.

Yup.