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3254

S.A. 3255: Death of Tar-Palantir; Ar-Pharazôn seizes the Sceptre of Númenor.

"Ar-Pharazôn the Golden was the proudest and most powerful of all the Kings, and no less than the kingship of the world was his desire." —The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A

Spoiler

In his youth, Pharazôn and Amandil, the Lord of Andúnië and later the leader of the Faithful Númenóreans, were dear friends. After some time, Pharazôn departed from Númenor to participate in the wars in Middle-earth that the King's Men were waging against Sauron. While in Middle-earth, he became a great captain and commander of the Númenórean armies. Pharazôn did not return to Númenor until a few years before the death of Tar-Palantir, when he heard of his own father's early death. During his time there, Pharazôn was generous with the wealth he had acquired in Middle-earth, and the hearts of the people were turned toward him. He remained on the island until Tar-Palantir died. At that time, Pharazôn took the King's daughter Míriel as his wife, much against her will, and against the laws of Númenor which prohibited first cousins from marrying. Pharazôn then changed her name to Ar-Zimraphel. Thus he usurped the throne and, taking the Sceptre into his own hand, proclaimed himself King Ar-Pharazôn in S.A. 3255.

3256

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 3259

This classic shot of a galaxy in the constellation of Ursa Major was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 3259 is a bright barred spiral galaxy located approximately 110 million light-years from Earth.

Being a fully-formed active galaxy, its bright central bulge hosts a supermassive black hole, whose huge appetite for matter explains the high luminosity of the galaxy’s core: as it devours its surroundings, the black hole emits intense radiation across the whole electromagnetic spectrum, including in visible light.

The beautiful spiral arms of the galaxy are not left out either as they contain dark lanes of dust and gas, ideal spawning grounds for stars. These bright, young, hot stars appear in rich clusters in the galaxy’s arms and are what gives the galaxy its blueish hue.

Interestingly, the galaxy has a small companion (visible to the left of the image), a much smaller galaxy named LEDA 213712 that may be orbiting NGC 3259. In the background, numerous distant galaxies can be seen, easily identifiable by their elliptical shapes. They are visible here mainly in infrared light, which is shown in red in this image.

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S.A. 3261: Ar-Pharazôn lands at the Haven of Umbar to challenge Sauron, journeying 7 days with banner and trumpet. He will take Sauron as prisoner.

Sauron

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Session Initiation Protocol (SIP): Locating SIP Servers (RFC 3263)

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