I can recall the excitement of waiting for the first CCD Image I had taken to download, THAT was exciting. I was using a Starlight Express MX716 for those who can remember. This however is far more exciting. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially come online and now we're looking at its first pictures. The telescope has completed ten hours of test observations, viewing millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars. It found thousands of new asteroids in just a few hours of observations, and took incredible pictures of the Triffid and Lagoon Nebulae. Over the course of its 10-year primary mission, it'll capture 800 images of every spot in the southern sky.

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The man behind the incredible soundtrack for the 2018 remake of A Star Is Born. Lukas Nelson just released his debut solo album, American Romance, after many years as the frontman for his former band, Promise of the Real. They toured for years, put out several amazing albums, and even backed Neil Young on tour for a while. Lukas, son of the great Willie Nelson, is a truly amazing artist, and he played a really big role in the music of the aforementioned movie, in addition to helping star Bradley Cooper, who played rock star Jackson Maine, become a real artist onscreen. Cooper modeled his character after Lukas in many ways, in addition to pulling inspiration from the likes of Eddie Vedder, Bono, Lenny Kravitz and others. Cooper first saw Lukas playing guitar during a 2016 trip to the Desert Trip music festival in Indio, California, where he was backing Young, who Cooper is a huge fan of. Following that performance, which really impressed Cooper (who was also the director on the film), he knew he wanted Lukas to be part of the film. He had just started pre-production on, it and he immediately saw his character in Lukas, and while obviously Bradley has some musical talent, he needed a real pro to help him fully sell the character. Lukas spent a lot of time with Cooper, about a year before they started filming, helping him become the rock star you see onscreen in terms of how to perform for a live audience too, and it’s one of my favorite movies, so I’m probably a little biased in terms of how cool that is. Lukas is truly a great songwriter and great live performer, perpetually underrated (probably because of his father), so Cooper definitely found the right man for the job. During a 2019 interview with Screen Daily, Lukas talked about how they first met on a call after that festival performance: “Bradley is a huge Neil Young fan, so that immediately endeared him to me. He asked me to come over to his house, and he played me a clip of some stuff that he sang, and I thought, ‘This is doable, because he already knows what sounds right.’ I [sat] with him for hours singing and writing songs. If I was away, I would send him songs and he would send me clips of him singing and it just got better and better.” At first, Lukas was just there helping offscreen, and after spending so much time with him learning guitar, Bradley eventually asked him to write songs for the movie, and even be his backing band with the rest of POTR in the movie: “I never saw a script. It was a matter of us working together, creating the character and the guitar sound with him and the guitar parts he wanted me to play on songs, things like that. And then, it was a full collaborative effort. Since Jackson Maine is a character that is sort of based on me and other influences, I just wrote a bunch of songs that are based upon my own life.” It’s really cool to watch the movie and see his band int he background, though the ever-humble Nelson says he was just doing what he loves and it came naturally to appear on camera: “I was just onstage with my band, wearing what I would usually wear, and when we’re performing there are nearly always cameras around, so it just felt like a natural progression.” He also became good friends with co-star Lady Gaga, who plays Ally, and they wrote several songs together too. Lukas has writing credits on seven of the songs on the movie soundtrack, in addition to having a producer credit on seven of the 18 original songs on the soundtrack. Lukas wrote “Black Eyes” and “Too Far Gone” with Cooper, and “Alibi” with Lady Gaga and Cooper. Lady Gaga and Nelson also co-wrote “Look What I Found,” “Is That Alright?” “Music to My Eyes” “The Cure,” and “I Don’t Know What Love Is.” I’ve always loved that whole soundtrack, and it makes so much sense that he was so heavily involved in all of it. It’s so rare to have a Hollywood movie with such quality music, and Lukas says he and Lady Gaga ended up becoming very good friends, so it was a perfect pairing to be producers and musical directors on the movie: “We hit it off. We had this musical telepathy and we wrote well together. We ended up sort of being musical producers and directors of the music in the film. I’ll write a song or she’ll write a song and then we’ll bring it to each other and then we’ll collaborate in flushing that song out, putting our own influences on the song so that ultimately it’s a collaboration and then it becomes something special.” For example, Lady Gaga and her collaborators Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando and Andrew Wyatt had already started on “Shallow,” one of the biggest hits and fan-favorites, and when Lukas started working on the music, he added a lot of the guitar parts that make the song such a standout. At the time the movie was released, the music was everywhere and they ended up winning several big awards for it, including a BAFTA Award for Best Original Music and a Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. When you see where Lukas is at now in his musical journey, it’s cool to look back at all of the impressive things he’s already done and been part of, and I have no doubt the music would certainly not have been anywhere near as good without his influence. If you’ve never really gotten into Lukas’ music before, his debut record is truly incredible, and it’s already up there on my album of the year list. He certainly came by his songwriting and guitar playing talent very honestly, and in addition to that, the man can sing his behind off and just has that special “thing” that you can’t quite put your finger on, in addition to his obvious talents, that sets him apart and makes his music stand out. Of course, he’s been heavily influenced by his dad, as has pretty much every other musician o the planet, but he has his own voice and is very much his own artist in terms of what he has to say and how it all sounds. Please do yourself a favor and check out American Romance… I have a feeling you’ll find a new favorite artist. You can see him in the opening scene of A Star Is Born playing alongside Cooper: He also appears in several other scenes in the movie, and you can watch Bradley and Lukas discuss the making of the music and working together:  The post Did You Know Lukas Nelson Helped Write, Produce & Perform On The 2018 ‘A Star Is Born’ Soundtrack? first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

There's a big wide world beyond common molds and mushrooms—and some of it is very strange.