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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Tidally locked in synchronous rotation, the Moon always presents its familiar nearside to denizens of planet Earth. From lunar orbit, the Moon's farside can become familiar, though. In fact this sharp picture, a mosaic from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's wide angle camera, is centered on the lunar farside. Part of a global mosaic of over 15,000 images acquired between November 2009 and February 2011, the highest resolution version shows features at a scale of 100 meters per pixel. Surprisingly, the rough and battered surface of the farside looks very different from the nearside covered with smooth dark lunar maria. A likely explanation is that the farside crust is thicker, making it harder for molten material from the interior to flow to the surface and form dark, smooth maria.

Photo by NASA / GSFC / Arizona State Univ. / Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Welcome to Kudos365 Weekly History Challenge. Test your history  knowledge and see how many of the history questions you can answer correctly. A new updated History Challenge is released every Saturday.

Bust of Germanicus, Getty Villa, California. The young Germanicus is depicted before the Roman rite of depositio barbae, the first shaving of the beard. Adopted by emperor Tiberius, Germanicus should succed him as Emperor, if he hadn't died on this day 2007 years ago.

J. Paul Getty Museum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

By kazuend on Unsplash

Richard Bach -  American writer (born June 23, 1936) - He has written numerous flight-related works of fiction and non-fiction. His work include Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970) and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, both of which were among the best sellers in the 1970's. More 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, mathematician and wife of astronomer Asaph Hall. Asaph Hall discovered both the Red Planet's moons in 1877. Over 9 kilometers across, Stickney is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself, so large that the impact that blasted out the crater likely came close to shattering the tiny moon. This enhanced-color image of Stickney and surroundings was recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed within some six thousand kilometers of Phobos in March of 2008. Even though the surface gravity of asteroid-like Phobos is less than 1/1000th Earth's gravity, streaks suggest loose material slid down inside the crater walls over time. Light bluish regions near the crater's rim could indicate a relatively freshly exposed surface. The origin of the curious grooves along the surface is mysterious but may be related to tidal stresses experienced by close-orbiting Phobos or the crater-forming impact itself.

Photo by HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA

PO boxes at the historic U.S. Post Office in downtown Chico, California. Today is International World Post Day.

Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist and poet. He was a key figure in Spanish language and universal literature. Biography

By Les Anderson on Unsplash