Public Posts

Rudder and propeller on beached fishing vessel Skagerrak, Nørre Vorupør beach, Denmark.

Kim Hansen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927)  Founder of the Sufi Order in the West and teacher of Universal Sufism - Born in India.

Bernice Tong on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Comet R3 is brightening rapidly -- will it survive? C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) has been slowly brightening and extending an ion tail since its discovery last year. This shedding mountain of dirty ice puts on its best sky show this month, though, because it passes its closest to both the Sun (April 19) and the Earth (April 25). The featured image, showing R3 already sporting a tail extending over 10 degrees, was taken two nights ago from Sion, Switzerland with the big mountain Bietschhorn on the left. Comet R3 will be visible during mid-April before sunrise. Although the future brightness of any comet is hard to predict, the brightness of R3 makes it already a good camera comet and it may become visible to the unaided eye in the next week. Comet R3's physical future is also unknown because, like Comet A1 (MAPS) earlier this month, it may disintegrate when it passes its closest to the Sun. Or it may live to leave the Solar System. Growing Gallery: Comet R3 in 2026

Photo by José Rodrigues

Arboreal stingless bee nest (Trigona sp.) near Flores, Guatemala.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Meckl Antal on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

On flight day 6 (April 6) the Artemis II mission achieved a historic lunar flyby. Rounding the lunar far side, the deep space maneuver marked humanity's first venture to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The Orion spacecraft Integrity reached a maximum distance of nearly 407,000 kilometers, and the Artemis II crew, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, set the record for the farthest distance from Earth traveled by any human since the Apollo 13 crew in 1970. From behind the Moon on flight day 6, a solar array wing camera recorded this space age selfie, framing the spacecraft and lunar far side. Planet Earth, home to the Artemis II crew, is the small, bright crescent beyond the lunar limb. The crew safely returned home on Artemis II mission flight day 10. Artemis II: Splashdown

Glendale tea estate with silver oak shade trees, verdant green and bright blue during a break from the monsoon rains. View from NH-181, Kattery, Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu, India.

Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.