Magazine Posts

"The legacy of slavery in America remains a divisive issue, with sharp political divides. Some argue that slavery still contributes to modern economic inequalities. Others believe its effects have largely faded. One way to measure the legacy of slavery is to determine whether the disproportionate riches of slaveholders have been passed down to their present-day descendants"..."We found that legislators who are descendants of slaveholders are significantly wealthier than members of Congress without slaveholder ancestry"... More at The Conversation ➜

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

These dark pillars may look destructive, but they are creating stars. This pillar-capturing picture of the Eagle Nebula combines visible light exposures taken with the Hubble Space Telescope with infrared images taken with the James Webb Space Telescope to highlight evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars. At each pillar's end, the intense radiation of bright young stars causes low density material to boil away, leaving stellar nurseries of dense EGGs exposed. The Eagle Nebula, associated with the open star cluster M16, lies about 7000 light years away. Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

"A growing number of students in public schools – right now, about 15% of them – are eligible for special education services. These services include specially designed instruction for students with autism, learning or physical disabilities, or traumatic brain injuries. But going into the current school year, more than half of U.S. public schools anticipate being short-staffed in special education. More at The Conversation ➜

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS were a sight to behold. Pictured, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) was captured near peak impressiveness last week over the Eastern Sierra Mountains in California, USA. The comet not only showed a bright tail, but a distinct anti-tail pointing in nearly the opposite direction. The globular star cluster M5 can be seen on the right, far in the distance. As it approached, it was unclear if this crumbling iceberg would disintegrate completely as it warmed in the bright sunlight. In reality, the comet survived to become brighter than any star in the night (magnitude -4.9), but unfortunately was then so nearly in front of the Sun that it was hard for many casual observers to locate. Whether Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas becomes known as the Great Comet of 2024 now depends, in part, on how impressive incoming comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) becomes over the next two weeks. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

Photo by Brian Fulda

"Israeli Authorities Censor Film About 1948 Depopulation of Palestine. Lyd (2023), produced by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, explores a future without Israeli occupation through archival footage and sci-fi elements." More

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the local universe and on the cosmic microwave background. The featured image from the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium Space Show Dark Universe highlights one example of how pervasive dark matter might haunt our universe. In this frame from a detailed computer simulation, complex filaments of dark matter, shown in black, are strewn about the universe like spider webs, while the relatively rare clumps of familiar baryonic matter are colored orange. These simulations are good statistical matches to astronomical observations. In what is perhaps a scarier turn of events, dark matter -- although quite strange and in an unknown form -- is no longer thought to be the strangest source of gravity in the universe. That honor now falls to dark energy, a more uniform source of repulsive gravity that seems to now dominate the expansion of the entire universe. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Tom Abel & Ralf Kaehler (KIPAC, SLAC), AMNH

www.calobphotography.com

"When Anna Nusslock showed up at her local hospital 15 weeks pregnant and in severe pain earlier this year, she said, a doctor delivered devastating news: The twins she and her husband had so desperately wanted were not viable. Further, her own health was in danger, and she needed an emergency abortion to prevent hemorrhaging and infection.......Providence St. Joseph Hospital, in the small Northern California coastal city of Eureka, refused to provide the care she required because doctors could detect fetal "heart tones," Nusslock said".....  More at The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) ➜

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

These six panels follow daily apparitions of comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS as it moved away from our fair planet during the past week. The images were taken with the same camera and lens at the indicated dates and locations from California, planet Earth. At far right on October 12 the visitor from the distant Oort cloud was near its closest approach, some 70 million kilometers (about 4 light-minutes) away. Its bright coma and long dust tail were close on the sky to the setting Sun but still easy to spot against a bright western horizon. Over the following days, the outbound comet steadily climbs above the ecliptic and north into the darker western evening sky, but begins to fade from view. Crossing the Earth's orbital plane around October 14, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS exhibits a noticeable antitail extended toward the western horizon. Higher in the evening sky at sunset by October 17 (far left) the comet has faded and reached a distance of around 77 million kilometers from planet Earth. Hopefully you enjoyed some of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS's bid to become the best comet of 2024. This comet's initial orbital period estimates were a mere 80,000 years, but in fact it may never return to the inner Solar System. Growing Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024

Photo by Xingyang Cai

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

On October 14 it was hard to capture a full view of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. Taken after the comet's closest approach to our fair planet, this evening skyview almost does though. With two telephoto frames combined, the image stretches about 26 degrees across the sky from top to bottom, looking west from Gates Pass, Tucson, Arizona. Comet watchers that night could even identify globular star cluster M5 and the faint apparition of periodic comet 13P Olbers near the long the path of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS's whitish dust tail above the bright comet's coma. Due to perspective as the Earth is crossing the comet's orbital plane, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS also has a pronounced antitail. The antitail is composed of dust previously released and fanning out away from the Sun along the comet's orbit, visible as a needle-like extension below the bright coma toward the rugged western horizon. Growing Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024

Photo by Adam Block

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

NASA's Europa Clipper is now headed toward an ocean world beyond Earth. The large spacecraft is tucked into the payload fairing atop the Falcon Heavy rocket in this photo, taken at Kennedy Space Center the day before the mission's successful October 14 launch. Europa Clipper's interplanetary voyage will first take it to Mars, then back to Earth, and then on to Jupiter on gravity assist trajectories that will allow it to enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. Once orbiting Jupiter, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times, exploring a Jovian moon with a global subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. Posing in the background next to the floodlit rocket is Comet Tsuchinsan-ATLAS, about a day after the comet's closest approach to Earth. A current darling of evening skies, the naked-eye comet is a visitor from the distant Oort cloud Growing Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024

Photo by Ben Cooper

"The U.S. military trained him in explosives and battlefield tactics. Now the Iraq War veteran and enlisted National Guard member was calling for taking up arms against police and government officials in his own country"...  More at AP NEWS ➜