50 posts on Lyra's Letters!

Lyra's Letters has published 50 posts so far, so here is some information:

The origins:    This blog started out as a newsletter that we would mail to our friends. There were three issues published, and it was designed by Stephen(in 'Contributors'), and written by the kids(Wytse, Daniel, Arwin). I(Wytse) wrote mostly short stories, Daniel wrote mostly nonfiction posts, and Arwin submitted poems and comic strips. Lyra's Letters was made into a blog around 13 February 2014.

The name:    Lyra's Letters is an elected name. It was written on a list along with The Gensemer Times and other names, then the family voted for some of them. Lyra's Letters was Stephen's idea, so that we could put a picture of the family dog, Lyra(see the July article) in the corner of the newsletter.

The posts:     There are many types of posts written in Lyra's Letters:
Short story posts:
    Storm above the Alinian plains(March, May, June)
    paradise(May)
    The Battle in the Hills(July)
    "new book", "new story"(May, July, September, October, Continuing)
Nonfiction posts:
    How did the Europeans react to the Australian Animals when they were exploring Australia?(February)
    Medical uses of gold in the past(April)
    Dogs(May)
    Cats(June)
    The first Australians(June)
    What is an endangered species?(June)
    Celebrating independence day(July)
    Black Saturday(July)
    stargazing(August)
    To the top of the world(August)
    The weirdest animals of the world(September)
    Hallow's Eve(October)
Nonfictional/Personal posts:
    The Walkabout Wildlife Park(February)
    Another trip to Jindabyne(April)
    Blue Mountains Trip(April)
    How to get rid of an Australian land leech(May)
    Plastic of Umina(June)
    The Six Foot Track(July)
    Lyra(July)
    Being a Writer(July)
    What to do with a paper and pencil(July)
Other posts:
    poem(poem, February)
    Stop the XL Pipeline!(comment, March)
    Homemade recipe(recipe, April)
    Energy(poem, May)
    Top 5 favourite books(book review, July)
    IMPORTANT MESSAGE(notice, October)

The contributors:    look at the 'Contributors' section. Stephen designed the original newsletter(look above), Nynke owns the blog, Arwin wrote a poem, posted in February, Daniel has made a significant contribution, and I(Wytse) have written a lot too.

I have learned a lot about writing ever since the blog started, and I hope I will keep getting better.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE

The Lyra's Letters writers have produced almost fifty posts since February. Three stories have been and are being posted. And a quite a handful of posts have been seen by over twenty people. Recommended/popular articles include:

Medical uses of gold in the past (April)

paradise (May) (Cont'd as "The Battle In The Hills")

How to get rid of an Australian land leech (May)

What is an endangered species? (June)

Plastic of Umina (June)

Being a writer (July)

Lyra (July)

The Six Foot Track (July)

To the top of the world (August)

Stargazing (August)

The weirdest animals of the world (September)

Hallow's Eve (October)

The Lyra's Letters team would love it if our followers could send in their own contributions. We will publish:

Recounts

Illustrations

Stories*

Nonfiction

Poems
Recipes**

*Can be any type of fiction, but has to be, at the most, 3000 words long.

**Has to be tested at your house first.

Anything not useful such as advertisements and inappropriate content will be discarded. Remember that anything that goes into Lyra's Letters will be edited. 

Thank you, the followers of Lyra's Letters! We encourage you to comment a lot.

Hallow's Eve

Among Christmas, Easter, and New Years, Halloween is a very old holiday celebrated throughout the world. And it is coming in just seventeen days!

There are two ways people celebrate Halloween. There is trick-or-treating, the practice of knocking on peoples' doors with costumes around dusk and asking for candy. However, this only works well in certain neighborhoods as many people do not give out treats at Halloween. Another way of celebrating is going to parties, almost any type, although most require costumes.

Why is "Halloween Eve" the evening of Halloween, and not the day before? The answer lies in the holiday's origin.

There used to be an ancient holiday on the first of November called All Saint's Day, the day when ghosts were apparently the most active. People celebrated at the end of the day, so happy they were that it was over. The celebration dated back to the Middle Ages.

Someone wondered what time of  All Saints' Day would be the worst. This guy chose not the day, but the night before. Everybody struggled to find a good name for this night. They finally settled with "All Hallows' Eve" or just "Hallows' Eve".

On the spookiest night of the year, why not sit inside, around the fire? Why not party, and be merry? Soon, more parties happened on Hallows' Eve than on All Saints' Day itself. All Saints' Day slowly faded away into nothing much more than history. Some still celebrate it, but not the people who celebrate Halloween.

The cat, bat, and owl were quickly adopted as symbols of Halloween, as hunters of the night. Stories such as Bram Stoker's Dracula were also associated with Halloween, just because they were spooky.

Soon, the holiday we know as Halloween began to assemble. It is no longer a time to fear, but a time to look forward to.

The weirdest animals of the world

Australia

Many weird animals live in Australia. This may be because Australia and Antarctica broke away from all other land masses long before other continents detached from their neighbours, but it may have something to do with the dinosaurs wiping out large mammals on other continents. For more information see Wytse's February article.

Marsupials live in Australia, some large islands in Oceania, New Zealand, New Guinea, and Indonesia. There is also a stand of them in North America.

Marsupials make up the bulk of Australian fauna. There is the kangaroo, an animal Australia is famous for. By hopping everywhere, kangaroos are three times as efficient as people. There are many types of kangaroos, including the eastern and western gray and the red kangaroo. There are also many close relatives of the kangaroo, including the euro, padimellon, wallaroo, and wallaby.
One of the benefits of a pouch in all these animals is that young can be born at a very early stage of growth, giving kangaroos, wallabies, and their relatives a rather short gestation period.

Koalas are some of the only animals capable of eating the poisonous eucalyptus
leaves. Digesting the leaves, however, robs them of all energy, so koalas spend up to 160 hours a week dozing off in a tree. The most active marsupials are the predators. Unfortunately, the largest went extinct in 1936 from hunting, the second largest is dying out from a contagious cancer, and the third largest is critically endangered from habitat loss! Bringing back all these animals, even the Thylacine, is or will be possible, but only if we really try.

Australia has many types of bird -- Cockatoos, lorikeets, turkeys, the largest population of pelicans. Even penguins live in Australia. The weirdest bird is the Lyrebird. This bird can mimic anything, from human voices to chainsaws to other birds. It also has six unique calls. 

The Americas

The Americas have been isolated for over 90 million years. This let the animals there get more and more different before a land bridge was formed between Alaska and Siberia.
The first animals to cross the bridge did not come from Siberia, but from America. Bears had been evolving in the continent for years. Over that time, some bears had migrated onto the ice caps. These bears adapted to have white fur, so their prey could not easily see them in the ice. The bears also grew very large, so they could produce enough body heat. The polar bear had evolved. Polar bears, adapted to the cold, could easily cross the icy land bridge. They were followed by grizzly bears, which evolved into sun bears later on.

The next animals to cross the bridge were cats. Cats evolved in Siberia and dispersed south since then. Some cats, like bobcats, with their long hair and short tails, stayed in Siberia. When the land bridge formed, bobcats crossed to the other side. Now there are more bobcats in North America then there are in Russia. Along with bobcats came tundra-grazing caribou and the people following them. Later came beavers and otters, and, from America, songbirds.

In America, the birds did not evolve to become amazingly beautiful, but some became very intelligent, like the raven. Ravens have been known to use taps. The owl also evolved in America. Owls are intelligent, too.
One bird, the Arctic tern, has the longest migration in the world. It spends its time in Alaska when it is summer there. As it gets colder, the Arctic tern flies south over the Pacific to Antarctica for the summer there. In this way, the Arctic tern sees the most daylight of any animal.

Eurasia

The most biodiversity in Eurasia lies in India and Indonesia. Sadly, this area is also very crowded. One of the most endangered animals on Earth lives in the rainforest  regions of Asia -- The tiger. Tigers are the largest big cats as well as the deadliest, but tigers do not kill a fraction as many people as people kill tigers.  Tigers are not really weird, but they're different from other big cats in many ways.

Ever since agriculture became widespread, there were barely any real forests in northern Europe. However, a few pockets of land still exist. In a few of the wetlands, otters swim. Otters are not very weird either, but unlike many other animals, they are not bothered by human habitation.

The reason why there are not any truly weird animals in Eurasia is, white people have had encounters with them for millennium. Things are only weird if they are new.

Africa

Africa has a range of unique animals. Giraffes use their long necks and feet to reach high branches, as well as to be invincible against predators. Elephants are the largest animals on land, as well as the most dangerous. Zebras as well as other grazing animals travel in herds in the greatest migrations. Hippos are dangerous, very large and formidable.

Africa also has powerful predators. Of these, lions are the most charismatic and iconic. Hyenas are not just scavengers. They hunt during the night.

Cheetahs are more related to domestic cats then leopards. However, this does not stop them behaving like other big cats. Cheetahs are the fastest animal in the world, but only for half a minute. Cheetahs quickly tire. A person would easily be able to beat them in a race if the race was more than five kilometers long.

Interestingly enough, true big cats only exist in 2 continents, Asia and Africa. Africa has the largest big cat population in the world.

The Islands 


That's all the continents! Actually, there is more. Many islands were never connected to a continent, so weird animals could evolve there easily. The problem is, many islands are very new. Only grass and seagulls would find the island before it sinks into the sea.

There are a few old islands, though. The Galapagos Islands are very old, and much life has found a foothold there.

Iguanas live in the Galapagos islands. Marine Iguanas cling onto rocks warmed from the sun in the day, as well as just sitting there being battered by waves and diveing for algae. During the night they lie in rocks.

The Galapagos turtle can live up to 160 years and is very large. The Galapagos turtle was not evolved to look beautiful. Its legs look like big, scaly sacks of sand and it may have one or two dents in its shell. But the Galapagos turtle is a key species. If it disappears, so may many other plants and animals in Galapagos.
 
The Ocean


Water covers most of the Earth. In the water, all sorts of fish swim. The water is where life came from. The water is where most life is. The water is where the last life will die.

Around the edges of the ocean, fish are normal. It is thought that life started in rock pools, and it is true that in rock pools there is much ancient life. Life forms older than trilobites search the bottom. Hundreds of types of seaweed, algae, and mosses grow in the edges. Oysters and limpets are five hundred million years old.

This is not just it. Farther out, on the continental shelf, there are atolls with coral reefs. Coral and sponges were the first multi-celled life. All sorts of fish, sea slugs and sea cucumbers, shells, shellfish, cuttlefish, sharks, and many other types of life inhabit coral reefs and make them living rainbows full of the essence of life.

The continental shelf slopes off into the 2-mile deep waters of the Abyssal plain. Here, most animals never see the sun. The Abyssal plain has pressure that could crumple you like a paper cup. It is also very cold. Once, people thought it was as barren as a desert. However, life has been found. The Anglerfish lures fish by light into their mouths. The fish they lure have glowing eyes.

The trenches are the ultimate Abyss. No fish lives here, but all sorts of incredibly strange life abounds here. Much of this life is not animal, or plant, or any other type of life form well known of.

The weirdest animal in the world


Long ago, there were two types of mammal.  There were animals that resembled mice, and the egg-laying Thecodont. Then the dinosaurs evolved, keeping the mouse population small and wiping out Thecodonts. At least, in six continents. Three egg-laying mammals still exist. They are the long-beaked Echidna, the short-beaked Echidna, and the Platypus.


Platypuses ought to be the weirdest animals in the world. The platypus has the tail of a beaver and the bill of a duck. It lays eggs like a reptile and has poison like a snake. The platypus can sense electric signals like no other tetrapod.
When Europeans first brought specimens back to their home, people thought the Platypus was a hoax.


The weirdest thing about the Platypus is: The animal is very common, unlike certain weird animals who live in places which don't have room for weird animals. Australia accepts the weird, and only the weird.

To the top of the world

In the 1950's, an experienced mountaineer climbed a peak so high he needed an oxygen tank. That peak was mighty old Mount Everest, the highest point in the world. That mountaineer was the first known who climbed to the summit.

Ever since that climb, many people have been aiming to hike up the highest peak in each continent, from Elbrus in Europe to Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. The first person to do this was Richard Bass in 1985.

Mt. Kosciuszco in Australia is by far the easiest summit to climb, at 2,228 meters above. Not that Australia is as flat as a pancake. Australia includes majestic peaks, terrible cliffs, and wonderful valleys. At least, part of it does. Most of the rugged terrain is condensed off the east coast in a very broken mountain chain known as the Great Dividing Range, and there are some smaller ranges in the desert to the west. The most southerly of the mountains in the Great Dividing Range are the Snowy Mountains. Mount Kosciuszco is in southern New South Wales.
There are three ways up to the summit of the mountain. A trail from the resort of Thredbo provides the easiest route, but this route is very popular. The Summit Road from the tiny ski resort of Charlotte's Pass provides a less crowded and possibly more beautiful way. For adventurous hikers, the Main Range track is the longest and most exploratory of the walks.

Mount Kosciuszco may be the tallest point in Australia, but is by no means the tallest point in Oceania. There are points in New Zealand that are higher. Not including Sumatra, the tallest point in Oceania is in New Guinea and is called  Puncak Jaya, at 4,844 meters. The strange volcanic peak rises out of the rainforest at the top of a mountain range. As the climb includes a trek through the rainforest and a scramble up incredibly steep cliffs, Puncak Jaya is one of the more demanding climbs listed here.

The US state of Colorado includes very high mountains. But, there are even higher mountains to the north. Mount McKinley is in Alaska and is 6,194 meters high. It is permanently icecapped. However, the climb is not very hard compared to some other of the Seven Summits. There are a few alpine lakes in the range that can be wonderful in the height of the summer and frozen anytime else.

Aconcagua is the highest peak in South America at 6,961 meters and the second highest of the Seven Summits. It lies in Argentina. Did you know that 99.95 percent of the mass of the atmosphere is contained in the lower tenth? The air gets thinner as you go higher.  Something else also changes as you go higher, the boiling point of water. If  less than about 30 percent sea level pressure is present, your blood boils and you die. Aconcagua has 40 percent sea level air pressure, pretty close. Of course, the summit is snowcapped.

Elbrus is a great rounded mountain in the Caucasus mountain range in European Russia. Mount Elbrus is a gigantic sprawling snowcapped volcano.
It appears in satellite as a big white spot of paint off the main range. The west peak is 5,642 meters above sea level. However, people argue whether or not the peak is in Europe.

Mt. Blanc is in the alps on the Italian border. It is 4,810 meters high. There are two ways to climb. One way is the most popular and involves hiking up a glacier.
The other way includes rock climbing up a sheer cliff. The mountain is the most easily accessible of the Seven Summits.

Speaking of accessibility, Vinson Massif is the most remote of the peaks listed here. It is in Antarctica. Vinson Massif lies on the antarctic peninsula and is irregular and jagged. It is the coldest of the seven peaks at -30 degrees centigrade in the summer and is 4,892 meters high. 1,500 climbers have reached the top, a record low for the Seven Summits.

Mount Everest may be the highest point, but not the tallest mountain. Mount Kilimanjaro rises far above the African plains around. It is a volcanic, triple - summit mountain the highest summit of which is the Uhuru peak at 5,895 meters. There are many routes up the mountain. For a hundred miles around, the massif is very easy to see.

Now let's move back to the highest point in the world. Mount Everest is located on the Nepal/China border and the most common route up it has a Nepal approach. People say that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to climb Mount Everest. However, that might not be true.
On 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set out to climb the Northeast Ridge. They never returned. On 1999, a research expedition found Mallory's body at the bottom of a cliff face. Were the two climbing up or down the mountain when the tragedy happened? It is still a mystery.

Really, Mount Kilimanjaro is not the highest mountain. Mauna Kea, or the island of Hawaii, is. If Mount Everest was moved into the water next by Hawaii, it would appear as a really small and pointy rocky island.

stargazing

Antares can appear red or
yellow

    If you live in Australia, go out on a clear evening and look up. You will see the constellation of Scorpius straight above you, its tail stretched out in a hook behind it. In the center of Scorpius is the twinkling red star Antares, a massive red giant.

     We see stars as tiny shining specks of light. If you zoom in with a telescope or binoculars, you can see many more stars, but the stars look the same.

Epsilon Lyrae, the 'Double Double'

     A star you can see in the constellation Lyra, where the bright star Vega exists, is Epsilon Lyrae. If you look closely, you can see it is a double star, or two stars so close together in the sky they look like one. If you look through a telescope, you can find out each star in the double star is a double star itself, making Epsilon Lyrae a quadruple star.
     Double stars are all over the sky. The brightest star in the night sky is Sirius B. Sirius A, a very small white dwarf, is so close to Sirius B that it makes a double star called Sirius. Sirius has a magnitude of -1.46 and can be seen in many places in the southern hemisphere.
     People say Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, but it isn't the brightest thing. The only times the moon is less bright than Sirius are during a new moon and a total lunar eclipse. The planets can also be brighter.

The Sun, merely a yellow dwarf star

     Nor is Sirius the brightest star in the sky. The sun is only 149,600,000km away and has a magnitude of -26.74, so high that you cannot look straight at it.
     The sun is a nuclear fusion machine. Its immense weight makes its atoms so hot that their electrons are stripped from the nucleus and they go around at high speed. The positively charged atoms then crash into other atoms. When a heavy form of hydrogen, Deuterium, crashes into a heavier form of hydrogen, Tritium, It yields a Helium nucleus. The Helium is unstable, so it splits into one stable helium atom and one neutron. This process creates heat and light.
     In this way, the sun is constantly converting hydrogen into helium. The helium is heavier than hydrogen, so helium is always accumulating in the core of the sun. In a few billion years, the sun's core will be heavy enough to start converting helium into heavier elements. You should be thankful it hasn't started doing that yet, because it will expand into a red giant and swallow up Mercury and Venus.
     After that it will fuse heavier and heavier elements until Iron, the heaviest element that can be produced by nuclear fusion. Then It will explode, creating a Supernova. Luckily all of this will happen after all life on Earth is extinct.
     That happens to every star. They get formed in a nebula, where another star has exploded, then they form heavier and heavier elements, explode, and form a nebula that gives birth to new stars.
     The night sky- star charts, constellations, and shapes- is our view of the visible cosmos. It has been helpful. In the old library of Alexandria sat the famous star charts of Ptolemy that has guided sailors for years.
     Ptolemy was an astronomer and mathematician. In his star charts he included for each star latitude, longitude, hemisphere, and part of the sky.

The calendar. There used to be only
360 days in a year, because there are 
360 degrees in a circle.

 

     During the Renaissance the sky was split into twelve parts, each labelled by a constellation. These constellations include Gemini, Pieces, Cancer, Aries and eight more. At some time, the zones of the sky determined times of the year, judging by which zone was highest at that time of year. This led to the modern calendar and the twelve signs of the zodiac.
     We picture the sky as a sphere around the earth, but this idea was around for a long time. Before the Renaissance people thought the earth was the center of everything, and that the Universe was created just for them. They thought of the night sky as a crystal sphere, with nothing outside it. This thought probably led to the making of celestial globes, as they are the sky, seen as a sphere.
     There is a problem with celestial globes. In the real sky, we see it from the inside, but in a globe, the user sees it from the outside. If the manufacturer chooses to put the stars on their real positions on the globe, the globe will look backwards compared to the sky. One way to solve this problem is to have the globe backwards. Another way is to make the globe transparent so that the user looks through it, just like we look through the imaginary giant celestial globe from earth.
     There are ways to find both the north celestial pole and the south celestial pole. To find out the south, you find the southern cross, or Crux Australis. Then you extend it by three or four times. That point is the south celestial pole.

Finding Polaris

     To find the north celestial pole, you have to find a famous constellation. That constellation is Ursa Major, or the Big Bear. If you look at the brightest stars of it near the tail, you can see a part of Ursa Major called the Big Dipper. Find the two stars at the side of the 'cup' of the big dipper, then make an imaginary line going through those stars. Follow that line and you will come to a bright star called Polaris, or Alpha Ursa Minor(stars are labelled by brightness in the constellation, using the Greek alphabet. For example, Alpha Lyrae is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra). Polaris is at the tip of the tail and the brightest star of the 'Little Bear'. It is also the tip of the Little Dipper and a good definition of the north celestial pole.
     There are thousands of stars you can see through binoculars, many constellations, many wonders of the sky. From Barnard's loop, which takes up most of Orion, to the Hubble deep field, a tiny spot of sky where the Hubble Space telescope found thousands of very young galaxies, there is an uncountable number of things you can find by looking at a clear sky with a telescope or binoculars.

Our view on a misty morning -and a huntsman spider we caught