Followers

Thursday 27 June 2013

Thursday; food glorious food;



Pawpaw or Papaya ready to eat.
The black ripe seed is edible as well, they taste peppery. I keep those to sow as soon as possible to grow the next generation  Pawpaw trees. Take the seed from well grown and sweet fruit.
 Pawpaw trees can succumb to wet or cold .They need a protected place away from strong winds or waterlogged soil. 

The scientific name is Asimina triloba. The pawpaw belongs to the Annonaceae, the Custard Apple family, a large family of trees, shrubs and lianas that are widespread throughout the World tropics.

Paw Paw (or papaya) is a fruit that grows in tropical areas throughout the world and is easily available throughout Australia. 
It is not only delicious but it has many health benefits.

These are just some of the major vitamins and minerals found in large quantities in paw paw:   dietary fiber, folate, vitamin A, C and E. It also contains small amount of calcium, iron, riboflavin, thiamine and niacine. It is also very rich in antioxidant nutrients flavonoids and carotenes, very high in vitamin C plus A, and low in calories and sodium.

…and it can be  easily grown in your own backyard as long as you live in a tropical or subtropical climate!


©Photo/Text Ts

Sunday 23 June 2013

Sunday; chaos;

Chaos at the heart of Orion



NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have teamed up to expose the chaos that baby stars are creating 1,500 light-years away in a cosmic cloud called the Orion nebula.
 This striking infrared and visible-light composite indicates that four monstrously massive stars at the center of the cloud may be the main culprits in the familiar Orion constellation. The stars are collectively called the ""Trapezium."" Their community can be identified as the yellow smudge near the center of the image. Swirls of green in Hubble's ultraviolet and visible-light view reveal hydrogen and sulfur gas that have been heated and ionized by intense ultraviolet radiation from the Trapezium's stars.
 Meanwhile, Spitzer's infrared view exposes carbon-rich molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the cloud. These organic molecules have been illuminated by the Trapezium's stars, and are shown in the composite as wisps of red and orange.
 On Earth, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are found on burnt toast and in automobile exhaust. Together, the telescopes expose the stars in Orion as a rainbow of dots sprinkled throughout the image. Orange-yellow dots revealed by Spitzer are actually infant stars deeply embedded in a cocoon of dust and gas.
 Hubble showed less embedded stars as specks of green, and foreground stars as blue spots. Stellar winds from clusters of newborn stars scattered throughout the cloud etched all of the well-defined ridges and cavities in Orion. The large cavity near the right of the image was most likely carved by winds from the Trapezium's stars.
 Located 1,500 light-years away from Earth, the Orion nebula is the brightest spot in the sword of the Orion, or the ""Hunter"" constellation. The cosmic cloud is also our closest massive star-formation factory, and astronomers believe it contains more than 1,000 young stars. The Orion constellation is a familiar sight in the fall and winter night sky in the northern hemisphere. The nebula is invisible to the unaided eye, but can be resolved with binoculars or small telescopes. This image is a false-color composite where light detected at wavelengths of 0.43, 0.50, and 0.53 microns is blue. Light at wavelengths of 0.6, 0.65, and 0.91 microns is green. Light at 3.6 microns is orange, and 8.0 microns is red.

Astronomy is marvellous;