Magazine Posts

"In the years following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island nation for South Florida, setting the stage for what would become one of the most important linguistic convergences in all of the Americas....Today, the vast majority of the population is bilingual....and there is a lot of Spanish – and a lot of English – being spoken in Miami....This  sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish is creating a new dialect". More at The Conversation ➜

A new law lets the state withhold funds from libraries that remove books or don’t follow American Library Association guidelines. More at Bloomberg ➜

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This serene view from the coast of Sweden looks across the Baltic sea and compresses time, presenting the passage of one night in a single photograph. From sunset to sunrise, moonlight illuminates the creative sea and skyscape. Fleeting clouds, fixed stars, and flowing northern lights leave their traces in planet Earth's sky. To construct the timelapse image, 3296 video frames were recorded on the night of June's Full Moon between 7:04pm and 6:35am local time. As time progresses from left to right, a single column of pixels was taken from the corresponding individual frame and combined in sequence into a single digital image 3296 pixels wide. Happy Birthday APOD

Photo by Bernd Pröschold

Martin Johnson Heade (1819 – 1904) was an American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, and depictions of tropical birds (such as hummingbirds), as well as lotus blossoms and other still lifes. 
Heade was not a widely known artist during his lifetime, but his work attracted the notice of scholars, art historians, and collectors during the 1940s and  quickly became recognized as a major American artist.. Heade's works are now in major museums and collections. His paintings are occasionally discovered in unlikely places such as garage sales and flea markets.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

There is no sea on Earth large enough to contain the Shark nebula. This predator apparition poses us no danger as it is composed only of interstellar gas and dust. Dark dust like that featured here is somewhat like cigarette smoke and created in the cool atmospheres of giant stars. After being expelled with gas and gravitationally recondensing, massive stars may carve intricate structures into their birth cloud using their high energy light and fast stellar winds as sculpting tools. The heat they generate evaporates the murky molecular cloud as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow red. During disintegration, we humans can enjoy imagining these great clouds as common icons, like we do for water clouds on Earth. Including smaller dust nebulae such as Lynds Dark Nebula 1235 and Van den Bergh 149 & 150, the Shark nebula spans about 15 light years and lies about 650 light years away toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus).

Photo by Stephen Kennedy

For all the joys, you are.
For all the love you bring,
my soul burns brightly
of your virtues, I'll sing.

Be quiet now,
your fickle heart,
sharing your love
with another soul.

You must decide,
who to choose
or you may,
your love, lose.

Gray Sand Turtle -  Magee Marsh Wildlife Area, United States - Carroll Township, Ottawa County, Ohio, along the shore of Lake Erie.

Gary Bendig on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Jupiter's moons circle Jupiter. The featured video depicts Europa and Io, two of Jupiter's largest moons, crossing in front of the grand planet's Great Red Spot, the largest known storm system in our Solar System. The video was composed from images taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft as it passed Jupiter in 2000, on its way to Saturn. The two moons visible are volcanic Io, in the distance, and icy Europa. In the time-lapse video, Europa appears to overtake Io, which is odd because Io is closer to Jupiter and moves faster. The explanation is that the motion of the fast Cassini spacecraft changes the camera location significantly during imaging. Jupiter is currently being visited by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft, while ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), launched in April, is enroute.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What’s that near the Moon? It’s the International Space Station (ISS). Although the ISS may appear to be physically near the Moon, it is not — it is physically near the Earth. In low Earth orbit and circulating around our big blue marble about every 90 minutes, the ISS was captured photographically as it crossed nearly in front of the Moon. The Moon, itself in a month-long orbit around the Earth, shows a crescent phase as only a curving sliver of its Sun-illuminated half is visible from the Earth. The featured image was taken in late March from Shanghai, China and shows not only details of Earth's largest human-made satellite, but details of the cratered and barren surface of Earth's largest natural satellite. Over the next few years, humanity is planning to send more people and machines to the Moon than ever before.

Photo by Tianyao Yang

Church bells are ringing,
on this Sunday morn.
Sun rays starting the Dawn,
as another day is born.