Venus (is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never far from the Sun, either as morning star or evening star. Aside from the Sun and Moon, Venus is the brightest natural object in Earth's sky, capable of casting visible shadows on Earth at dark conditions and being visible to the naked eye in broad daylight. Venus is the second largest terrestrial object of the Solar System. It has a surface gravity slightly lower than on Earth and has a weak induced magnetosphere. The atmosphere of Venus consists mainly of carbon dioxide, and, at the planet’s surface, is the densest and hottest of the atmospheres of the four terrestrial planets. With an atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface of about 92 times the sea level pressure of Earth and a mean temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), the carbon dioxide gas at Venus's surface is in the supercritical phase of matter. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, making it the planet with the highest albedo in the Solar System. It may have had water oceans in the past, but after these evaporated the temperature rose under a runaway greenhouse effect. The possibility of life on Venus has long been a topic of speculation but convincing evidence has yet to be found. Like Mercury, Venus does not have any moons.[24] Solar days on Venus, with a length of 117 Earth days, are just about half as long as its solar year, orbiting the Sun every 224.7 Earth days. This Venusian daylength is a product of it rotating against its orbital motion, halving its full sidereal rotation period of 243 Earth days, the longest of all the Solar System planets. Venus and Uranus are the only planets with such a retrograde rotation, making the Sun move in their skies from their western horizon to their eastern. The orbit of Venus around the Sun is the closest to Earth's orbit, bringing them closer than any other pair of planets. This occurs during inferior conjunction with a synodic period of 1.6 years. However, Mercury is more frequently the closest to each. The orbits of Venus and Earth result in the lowest gravitational potential difference and lowest delta-v needed to transfer between them than to any other planet. This has made Venus a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth that spacecraft were sent to, starting with Venera 1 in 1961, and the first planet to be reached, impacted and in 1970 successfully landed on by Venera 7. As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, gaining its mainly used name from the Roman goddess of love and beauty which it is associated with. Furthermore it has been a prime inspiration for writers, poets and scholars. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BCE. Plans for better exploration with rovers or atmospheric missions, potentially crewed, at levels with almost Earth-like conditions have been proposed)

FYI:

Venus is portrayed just to the right of the large cypress tree near the center of the image in Vincent van Gogh's 1889 painting The Starry Night.............................

Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, which makes it the only planet in the solar system named after a female.....................................

c

Westerlund 1-26 -  or Wd 1-26 is a red supergiant within the outskirts of the Westerlund 1 super star cluster. It is one of the largest known stars discovered so far although its radius is uncertain but is calculated to be 1,165–1,221 solar radii (810,000,000–849,000,000 km; 5.42–5.68 au), with a possible but very unlikely upper estimate of 2,519 solar radii (1.752×109 km; 11.71 au), corresponding to a volume between 1.58 and 16 billion times bigger than the Sun. Assuming the upper estimate is correct, if placed at the center of the Solar System, its photosphere would engulf the orbit of Jupiter.

Westerlund 1 with the inset showing W1-26 and the associated ionized hydrogen cloud

Xichang Satellite Launch Center (also known as the Xichang Space Center, is a spaceport of China. It is located in Zeyuan Town (???), approximately 64 kilometers (40 mi) northwest of Xichang, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan. The facility became operational in 1984 and is used to launch numerous civil, scientific, and military payloads annually. It is notable as the site of Sino-European space cooperation, with the launch of the first of two Double Star scientific satellites in December 2003. Chinese officials have indicated interest in conducting additional international satellite launches from XSLC. In 1996, a fatal accident occurred when the rocket carrying the Intelsat 708 satellite failed on launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. Also, a 2007 test of an anti-satellite missile was launched from the center)

Chuck Yeager - A fighter pilot ace during World War II, Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier, when he flew the Bell X-1 rocket 700 mph in level flight in October 1947. Yeager later trained military pilots to become astronauts and served in various command posts until his retirement from the Air Force in 1975. His profile boosted by his portrayal in the 1979 book The Right Stuff and its 1983 film adaptation, Yeager became a well-known celebrity endorser and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985.

Comment: Maybe he didn't go into "outer space", but the way I look at it, it all started with Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier.

Zhurong (is an active Mars rover that is China's first rover to land on another planet (having previously landed two rovers on the Moon). It is part of the Tianwen-1 mission to Mars conducted by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The spacecraft was launched on 23 July 2020 and inserted into Martian orbit on 10 February 2021. The lander, carrying the rover, performed a successful soft-landing on Mars on 14 May 2021, making China the third country to successfully soft-land a spacecraft on Mars and the second one to establish stable communications from the surface, after the United States.[N 1] Zhurong was successfully deployed on 22 May 2021, 02:40 UTC. Zhurong is named after a Chinese mytho-historical figure usually associated with fire and light, as Mars is called "the Planet of Fire" (Chinese: ??) in China and some other countries in East Asia. It was selected by a public online vote held between 20 January 2021 and 28 February 2021, with Zhurong ranking first with 504,466 votes.The name was chosen with the meanings of "igniting the fire of interstellar exploration in China" and "to symbolize the Chinese people's determination to explore the stars and to uncover unknowns in the universe".

Off to work...........................

That was the end of Round 10....................

Our next topic, something easy. If it fits the letter, use it.

The topic for Alpha Game 170 is..........................From A to Z

Allegory (As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners. Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-)hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts)

Off to work.........................

Bob can be a man's name, usually a shortened version of Robert - Bob Newhart

Bob can be a hairstyle - 

Bob is a palindrome - spelled the same backwards and forwards -

You can bob for apples -

And there are many other ways the word bob can be used.

Checkmate ((often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with capture) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is never actually captured—the player loses as soon as the player's king is checkmated. In formal games, it is usually considered good etiquette to resign an inevitably lost game before being checkmated. If a player is not in check but has no legal move, then it is stalemate, and the game immediately ends in a draw. A checkmating move is recorded in algebraic notation using the hash symbol "#", for example: 34.Qg3#. A checkmate may occur in as few as two moves on one side with all of the pieces still on the board (as in Fool's mate, in the opening phase of the game), in a middlegame position (as in the 1956 game called the Game of the Century between Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer), or after many moves with as few as three pieces in an endgame position)

Checkmate using a queen and rook. 1.Qg5+ Ke4 2.Rf4+ Ke3 3.Qg3+ Ke2 4.Rf2+ Ke1 5.Qg1#..................................

Off to work....................

A Dagwood sandwich is a tall, multilayered sandwich made with a variety of meats, cheeses, and condiments. It is named after Dagwood Bumstead, a central character in the comic strip Blondie, who is frequently illustrated making enormous sandwiches. According to Blondie scripter Dean Young, his father, Chic Young, began drawing the huge sandwiches in the comic strip during 1936. Though the exact contents of Chic Young's illustrated Dagwood sandwich remain obscure, it appears to contain large quantities and varieties of cold cuts, sliced cheese, and vegetables separated by additional slices of bread. A whole small fish, presumably a sardine, is usually visible. An olive pierced by a toothpick or wooden skewer usually crowns the edible structure. "Dagwood sandwich" has been included in Webster's New World Dictionary, and "Dagwood" (referring to the sandwich) has been included in the American Heritage Dictionary.

YouTube

The Dagwood Sandwich

What is a Dagwood sandwhich?

Equator (is a circle of latitude that divides a spheroid, such as Earth, into the northern and southern hemispheres. On Earth, it is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about 40,075 km (24,901 mi) in circumference, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can also be used for any other celestial body that is roughly spherical. In spatial (3D) geometry, as applied in astronomy, the equator of a rotating spheroid (such as a planet) is the parallel (circle of latitude) at which latitude is defined to be 0°. It is an imaginary line on the spheroid, equidistant from its poles, dividing it into northern and southern hemispheres. In other words, it is the intersection of the spheroid with the plane perpendicular to its axis of rotation and midway between its geographical poles. On and near the equator (on Earth), noontime sunlight appears almost directly overhead (no more than about 23° from the zenith) every day, year-round. Consequently, the equator has a rather stable daytime temperature throughout the year. On the equinoxes (approximately March 20 and September 23) the subsolar point crosses Earth's equator at a shallow angle, sunlight shines perpendicular to Earth's axis of rotation, and all latitudes have nearly a 12-hour day and 12-hour night. The name is derived from medieval Latin word aequator, in the phrase circulus aequator diei et noctis, meaning 'circle equalizing day and night', from the Latin word aequare 'make equal')

The Equator Monument is located on the equator in Pontianak, Indonesia. It marks the division between the northern and southern hemispheres....................

Calling it a night...........................