Contributor Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Despite their resemblance to R2D2, these three are not the droids you're looking for. Instead, the enclosures house 1.8 meter Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert region of Chile. The ATs are designed to be used for interferometry, a technique for achieving extremely high resolution observations, in concert with the observatory's 8 meter Very Large Telescope units. A total of four ATs are operational, each fitted with a transporter that moves the telescope along a track allowing different arrays with the large unit telescopes. To work as an interferometer, the light from each telescope is brought to a common focal point by a system of mirrors in underground tunnels. Above these three ATs, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are the far, far away satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. In the clear and otherwise dark southern skies, planet Earth's greenish atmospheric airglow stretches faintly along the horizon.

Photo by Yuri Beletsky

A fantasy, a trip,
about losing my mind.
Surprising to me,
for I couldn't find,

Losing the one you love,
with no excuse or to explain,
why this had to happen?
There's no one to blame.

Reflections about acts often taken
without thought of the differences
they made. I miss this.

Here we go,
alone again.
Sadness returns,
My old friend.

No matter how,
I seek happiness,
you return to me,
with no finesse.

When day is done
and fortune reigns,
will luck reduce,
all the pains?

Pains from days
gone bye,
when we ask the question,
what happened or why?

Here I am,
back in my room.
A place, a denizen,
of impending gloom.

When rivers flow,
with water deep,
while sunlight,
plays hide and seek,

towards the horizon, far,
looking West,
it's when we know,
our life is best.

Worry not, about
the morrows now,
enjoy your time.
You all know how.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A mere 280 light-years from Earth, tidally locked, Jupiter-sized exoplanet WASP-43b orbits its parent star once every 0.8 Earth days. That puts it about 2 million kilometers (less than 1/25th the orbital distance of Mercury) from a small, cool sun. Still, on a dayside always facing its parent star, temperatures approach a torrid 2,500 degrees F as measured at infrared wavelengths by the MIRI instrument on board the James Webb Space Telescope. In this illustration of the hot exoplanet's orbit, Webb measurements also show nightside temperatures remain above 1,000 degrees F. That suggests that strong equatorial winds circulate the dayside atmospheric gases to the nightside before they can completely cool off. Exoplanet WASP-43b is now formally known as Astrolábos, and its K-type parent star has been christened Gnomon. Webb's infrared spectra indicate water vapor is present on the nightside as well as the dayside of the planet, providing information about cloud cover on Astrolábos.

A Feather from an Angel
Floats gently down to earth,
Announcing the demise
Of another mortal life,
And portending the finality
That awaits us at the end.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a grand design spiral galaxy. The large galaxy of over 100 billion stars has well-defined spiral arms, similar to our own Milky Way. One of the brightest members of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, M100, also known as NGC 4321 is 56 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. In this telescopic image, the face-on grand design spiral shares a nearly 1 degree wide field-of-view with slightly less conspicuous edge-on spiral NGC 4312 (at upper right). The 21 hour long equivalent exposure from a dark sky site near Flagstaff, Arizona, planet Earth, reveals M100's bright blue star clusters and intricate winding dust lanes which are hallmarks of this class of galaxies. Measurements of variable stars in M100 have played an important role in determining the size and age of the Universe.

Photo by Drew Evans

       The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

First Stanza of Henry W. Longfellow's "The Day is Done". See complete poem

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet and educator . His works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was was one of the Fireside Poets from New England and the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. More

I looked, I saw,
I took a chance.
Now I'm faced with,
an aborted romance.

Was it right,
or was it wrong?
The answer must be,
I don't belong,

in the life I see,
for it must be,
someone else,
not with thee.