Public Posts

Sun rises over a wintry landscape. Location, Langweerderwielen (Langwarder Wielen) and surroundings.

Dominicus Johannes Bergsma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

I shall gather myself into myself again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
Fusing them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
Watching the future come and the present go,
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In restless self-importance to and fro.

Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, and used the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger after her marriage in 1914. She is the author of many poetry collections. In 1918 she was awarded both the Columbia Poetry Prize (now the Pulitzer) and the Poetry Society of America Prize for her "Love Songs" collection published in 1917 .... Read more

Gabriele Agrillo on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would have suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant. This sharp telescopic view is centered on a western segment of the Veil Nebula cataloged as NGC 6960 but less formally known as the Witch's Broom Nebula. Blasted out in the cataclysmic explosion, the interstellar shock wave plows through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. Imaged with narrow band filters, the glowing filaments are like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into atomic hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue-green) gas. The complete supernova remnant lies about 1400 light-years away towards the constellation Cygnus. This Witch's Broom actually spans about 35 light-years. The bright star in the frame is 52 Cygni, visible with the unaided eye from a dark location but unrelated to the ancient supernova remnant.

Photo by Martin Pugh (Heaven's Mirror Observatory)

Entrance to U-Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten, Berlin. Taken by Willem van de Poll in November 1935.

Willem van de Poll, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Oliver Cox on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex is reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the visible light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars just below the image center. The featured picture was taken from Sawda Natheel in Qatar. Jigsaw Nebula: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

Photo by Rabeea Alkuwari

The Ziegeleisee in Böckingen, Heilbronn, Germany, view in spring. In the centre a landing mute swan (Cygnus olor).

Roman Eisele, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.