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Explore major historical events from today or any day on Kudos 365.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the attention, flaunting young, bright, blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along graceful, symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars too, like irregular dwarf galaxy Sextans A. Its young star clusters and star forming regions are gathered into a gumdrop-shaped region a mere 5,000 light-years across. Seen toward the navigational constellation Sextans, the small galaxy lies some 4.5 million light-years distant. That puts it near the outskirts of the local group of galaxies, that includes the large, massive spirals Andromeda and our own Milky Way. Brighter Milky Way foreground stars appear spiky and yellowish in this colorful telescopic view of Sextans A.

Photo by Franz Hofmann

Kishū Kumano iwatake tori by Hiroshige II, a Japanese woodblock print in the ukiyo-e style, depicting the harvesting of iwatake mushrooms (Umbilicaria esculenta) near Kumano in the Kishū Domain.

Hiroshige II (1826-1869), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) was a German philosopher often called the “philosopher of pessimism". He is known for his 1818 work "The World as Will and Representation" (expanded in 1844), Schopenhauer was among the first philosophers in the Western tradition to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His writings influenced later existential philosophy and Freudian psychology.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This might look like a double-bladed lightsaber, but these two cosmic jets actually beam outward from a newborn star in a galaxy near you. Constructed from Hubble Space Telescope image data, the stunning scene spans about half a light-year across Herbig-Haro 24 (HH 24), some 1,300 light-years or 400 parsecs away in the stellar nurseries of the Orion B molecular cloud complex. Hidden from direct view, HH 24's central protostar is surrounded by cold dust and gas flattened into a rotating accretion disk. As material from the disk falls toward the young stellar object, it heats up. Opposing jets are blasted out along the system's rotation axis. Cutting through the region's interstellar matter, the narrow, energetic jets produce a series of glowing shock fronts along their path.

Bicycle parked in front of a graffitied building façade with doors, in a street near Kloveniersburgwal, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Behold one of the most photogenic regions of the night sky, captured impressively. Featured, the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs diagonally along the bottom-left corner, while the colorful Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is visible just right of center and the large red circular Zeta Ophiuchi Nebula appears near the top. In general, red emanates from nebulas glowing in the light of excited hydrogen gas, while blue marks interstellar dust preferentially reflecting the light of bright young stars. Thick dust usually appears dark brown. Many iconic objects of the night sky appear, including (can you find them?) the bright star Antares, the globular star cluster M4, and the Blue Horsehead nebula. This wide field composite, taken over 17 hours, was captured from South Africa last June. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Ireneusz Nowak

The window in a cafe in San Gimignano opens on Valdelsa, in Tuscany (Italy).

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