There will come soft rains....

Royal Greenwich Observatory

Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2020

Winning Image ( Stars and Nebulae )

NGC3576, seen here in Hydogen alpha light, less stars (removed via Starnet image processing software)

and in a psuedo colour palette (gleaned from press photographs of the devistating 2019/2020 Australian bushfires)

But the picture being painted on our home planet, is far more foreboding.

Recent fires along Australia's east coast

have had a catastrophic effect on the nation's people, flora and fauna.

As at 14 January 2020, fires  have burned an estimated 18.6 million hectares

(46 million acres; 186,000 square kilometres; 72,000 square miles),

Think: the entire area of USA state of Virginia or countries such as Belgium.

All of it.

Razed to the ground.

The Australian fires destroyed over 5,900 buildings (including approximately 2,683 homes)

and killed at least 33 people. (source Wiki)

Nearly three billion animals – mammals, reptiles, birds, and frogs – were killed or displaced (source WWF)

Some species now face extinction from this single event.

Light rains in mid January 2020 have extinguished many, but not all of the fires

that overhwelmed local fire-fighting efforts.

Larger and more intense fires was a prediction made by CSIRO climate scientists in the 1980's.

We ignore them at our peril......

"There will come soft rains" is a short story by Ray Bradbury,

where a fire eventually destroys a sentient home.

Unaware it's occupants have long since perished,

due a human induced apocalypse,

it reads a poem to an empty room.....

"Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone."

Can you see all 26 grey scales above?