PHOTOS FROM THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

The James Webb Space Telescope, aka the JWST, became fully functional earlier this month and is sending us new photos of our universe. The Hubble has been giving us fantastic photos for years, thing is, the JWST is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope, that's mind blowing!

This first structure, an abstract nebula (star nursery), is amazing in its complexity, and size. The universe is so immense it's mind boggling, it is a whopping 93 billion light years across. Considering that the universe is like 13.5 billion years old, that means that the universe is expanding at about eight times the speed of light!

Heavenly is what comes to mind here for me.

A wild painting by Vincent Van Gogh!

Here are a gang of galaxies doing their cosmic gravity dance, they will eventually merge into one super galaxy. Here's a wild fact to put COSMIC SIZE into perspective, get this... If the Milky Way collided with another galaxy, there would be no effect on us! That's right, the closest approaching star would be a gazillion miles away from us, and have zero effect on our solar system. That illustrates how the universe is even larger than you can imagine, it's ungodly large!

Some nebulas are here in a cluster, reminds me of the best abstract art there is.

Here's a photo of a Great Void surrounded by stars where there is basically nothing, no light. Things like this make astronomy interesting as Hell.

Radiated elements in gaseous form in giant clouds.

Here's the remains of a Super Nova explosion, spreading all the heavy elements and radiation out into the universe.

What a great piece of artwork!

A Nebula nob.

A Quasar star is one of the deadliest objects in space, radiation beyond comprehension.

Another great piece of abstract art!

And, another one!

This one reminds me of a busy futuristic city.

Heavenly bodies each and every one. Lucky for us the JWST is working away photographing the universe in high def.

SKY KING - "Operation Urgent" (1952) - In Color

 

It's Wild Western Wednesday down in The Dungeon, and tonight's feature is the first episode of the 1950's TV show "Sky King."

I saw this show a lot as a kid because it was on every Saturday morning after "My Friend Flicka" for many years, but I never saw it in color until yesterday, so this was pretty interesting. 

Thanks to that old cowpuncher Lord Litter in Berlin for once again finding crazy stuff like this for me. I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you don't think there's still good music being made in the world, then you really should go check out some of his radio shows. I guarantee you'll dig it!

 

Kirby Grant was "Sky King" in 72 episodes from 1952 to 1959. Kirby Grant was also a talented musician and singer, and performed or sang in quite a few movies like "Ghost Catchers" where he was the bandleader and performed with his orchestra, or in the movie "Chip Off The Old Block," where he was in a dance group called The Jivin' Jacks and Jills.

 

Sky King's plane was a twin engine Cessna called "Songbird" and there were quite a few of them used over the years, but the best known one was one of the later ones, a 1958 Cessna 310B, serial number 35548 that was owned by the Cessna Company. 

After the show ended, the plane was sold in 1959, and in 1961 it crashed near Delano, California, killing the pilot!

 

 

This first episode of the series was called "Operation Urgent." This distressed Air Force pilot is going down, and he's carrying secret documents that need to be protected. He's in the general area of The Flying Crown Ranch, and Sky King is able to get his call for help.

Todd (Invaders From Mars) Karns is Lieutenant Doug Mercer.

 

Lieutenant Mercer gives special instructions for Sky King to call into his base!

Sky gets a hold of his old friend Colonel Yates as played by Pierre (Creature With The Atom Brain) Watkin. 

Pierre had 431 credits to his name and was billed as White (As in Perry) in the 1948 version of "Superman," and was also in four episodes of the 1950's "The Adventures Of Superman" in different roles.

Lieutenant Mercer is stuck in literally the middle of nowhere.

 

 How ironic, a kindly old man just happens to be out strolling in the area!

 

Turns out that the old man has a shack with a bunch of radio equipment in it. Nothing suspicious of course. "Come on in, you look tired, have a cup of coffee!"

Do you suppose this is how 'Radio Shack' got their name? Are there even any 'Radio Shacks' open anymore?

 

Weird, the coffee is having the opposite effect on the Lieutenant. I think it was drugged! 

 

 

Lieutenant Mercer is a little slow, it took him this long to figure out that the kindly old man was actually a dirty rotten scoundrel named Griz Raetze! How'd this guy ever learn how to fly a plane?

 

Pretty hard to recognize him here, but the diabolical Griz Raetze was played by John Banner, who was also the beloved Sergeant Schultz in 168 episodes of "Hogan's Heroes" from 1965 to 1971.

 

 

Sky King's niece and nephew Penny and Clipper King, live with him and usually get involved in his adventures. Penny was played by Gloria (The Life Of Riley) Winters, and Clipper was played by Ron Hagerthy who was in "The Twilight Zone" episode titled "Dead Man's Shoes."

Clipper finds Lieutenant Mercer but Griz Raetze is a step ahead of him!

 

When she's not looking cute, a big part of Penny's job is to look worried.

 

Griz Raetze has got the shack wired up to blow up at two o'clock with Lieutenant Mercer and Clipper trapped inside!

 

Just in the nick of time Sky King bursts in and manically tears the bomb apart with only five seconds to spare. Sky was a real do or die kind of guy!

In real life Kirby Grant was a flying enthusiast and pilot, and sadly on Oct. 30, 1985 he was killed in a car accident while on his way to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger at Cape Canaveral, Florida, but Sky King will live forever!

TERRAHAWKS / "Mind Monster" - 1983

Here's a wild episode from the British TV series by Gerry Anderson and his team of amazing production designers. In this story, two members of the Terrahawks find a glass cabinet of mist floating in space and bring it back to the Hawknest for analysis. Their commander, Dr. 'Tiger' Ninestein, always says... Expect the unexpected!

Zelda, Yung-Star and Cy-Star are Martians who are bent on the destruction of Earth, this time Zelda has come up with a plan to create fear and horrific hallucinations by putting a special mist in a glass case, and sending it to Earth...

Their Martian ship goes into space and flings it towards the blue planet.

Already in space, the Terrahawk ship with Lt. Hiro and Kate encounter the strange object, and have to decide if they want to bring it to the ship and take it to the Terrahawk lab for inspection.

Lt. Hiro ends up sending two robot Zeroids out to bring it back to the ship.

Once in the ship, Kate goes to look at the case and is shocked when a creepy laughing figure appears in the blue mist.

The crew make it back to Earth and descend into a tree that opens up for them, landing just the way Elon Musk's Starship does, cool.

At the Terranest, the case of mist has been taken to the lab, when, Mary gets a strange feeling while working on a landscape painting. She turns her head to find a gruesome monster tearing up her studio and trying to attack her.

I personally hate when this happens. Anyway, Mary calls the others into her room, but it's in perfect condition with everything in its proper place! What's going on around here?

Lt. Hawkeye is searching a cave when he is overcome with a feeling of fear and anxiety.

I love this character, Moid. Moid attacks Hawkeye with fervor and delight.

The Zeroids do not see the menace, they just see Hawkeye acting out as if he were being attacked by some invisible thing.

So, Tiger has a plan to infect himself with the mist. He starts seeing horrific visions of monsters trying to attack him, he's sweating really bad.

You know, sometime that fake fur stuff just looks terrible and falls flat on its face, like here. I mean, it looks like a silly scary stuffed toy on the prowl.

The robots carry out Tiger's orders and drain his brain into a special device.

The final step of the dangerous process involves putting his brain back to its normal state, and of course everything turns out perfectly, duh.

And, the storage device with his infected brain is shot way into space and the bomb on board is detonated. The menacing plot blows up in the Martians' face!

In the meantime, the recording studio is waiting on Kate to do her number for a live recording of her new song (each episode ends with Kate singing a song). But, she can't make it in time. Love that damn building, I want one!

So, they use satellite dishes to connect up and the day is saved, Kate sings her tune, making for a fine happy ending...