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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This moon made quite an entrance. Typically, a moonrise is quiet and serene. Taking a few minutes to fully peek above the horizon, Earth's largest orbital companion can remain relatively obscure until it rises high in the nighttime sky. About a week ago, however, and despite being only half lit by the Sun, this rising moon put on a show -- at least from this location. The reason was that, as seen from Limfjord in Nykøbing Mors, Denmark, the moon rose below scattered clouds near the horizon. The result, captured here in a single exposure, was that moonlight poured through gaps in the clouds to created what are called crepuscular rays. These rays can fan out dramatically across the sky when starting near the horizon, and can even appear to converge on the other side of the sky. Well behind our Moon, stars from our Milky Way galaxy dot the background, and our galaxy's largest orbital companion -- the Andromeda galaxy -- can be found on the upper left. Almost Hyperspace: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Ruslan Merzlyakovastrorms

"It starts with a low hum that adheres itself to the underbelly of the hours like another dimension. Gradually, surreptitiously, the noise swells to a bellowing bass line, until it drowns out the symphony of life" ...Read more 

Photo credit: Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Run fast
into the wind,
on your
outward bound,
training path.
Run faster
with the
wind on
your back,
as you
return home.

Strap tight the light,
wait until Dawn.
Keeping your composure
for tomorrow and beyond

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Can you find the Moon? This usually simple task can be quite difficult. Even though the Moon is above your horizon half of the time, its phase can be anything from crescent to full. The featured image was taken in late May from Sant Martí d'Empúries, Spain, over the Mediterranean Sea in the early morning. One reason you can't find this moon is because it is very near to its new phase, when very little of the half illuminated by the Sun is visible to the Earth. Another reason is because this moon is near the horizon and so seen through a long path of Earth's atmosphere -- a path which dims the already faint crescent. Any crescent moon is only visible near the direction the Sun, and so only locatable near sunrise of sunset. The Moon runs through all of its phases in a month (moon-th), and this month the thinnest sliver of a crescent -- a new moon -- will occur in three days.

Photo by Mohamad Soltanolkotabi

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Many details of Saturn appear clearly in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms. Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual hexagonal cloud pattern surrounding Saturn's North Pole. Each side of the dark hexagon spans roughly the width of our Earth. The hexagon's existence was not predicted, and its origin and likely stability remains a topic of research. Saturn's famous rings circle the planet and cast shadows below the equator. The featured image was taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in 2014 in several infrared colors. In 2017 September, the Cassini mission was brought to a dramatic conclusion when the spacecraft was directed to dive into ringed giant. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator

Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and supplies water to Millions of people across seven states, tribal lines and northern Mexico. Many of these areas are experiencing some level of drought.

Source: : NASA Earth Observatory. (July 2000, 2021, 2022) ... Read more

Rain splatters,
bouncing into
a fine spray.
Freshening air,
night and day.
Liking the Sun,
as I do,
the ground
is dry and
I am
missing you.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility. The images were taken by Neil Armstrong looking out his window of the Eagle Lunar Module shortly after the July 20, 1969 landing. The frame at the far left (AS11-37-5449) is the first picture taken by a person on another world. Toward the south, thruster nozzles can be seen in the foreground on the left, while at the right, the shadow of the Eagle is visible to the west. For scale, the large, shallow crater on the right has a diameter of about 12 meters. Frames taken from the Lunar Module windows about an hour and a half after landing, before walking on the lunar surface, were intended to initially document the landing site in case an early departure was necessary.

"Americans see value in higher education ...... Most say a college degree is important, if not essential, in helping a young person succeed in the world......  While fewer than half of today’s young adults are enrolled in a two-year or four-year college, the share has risen steadily over the past several decades....... Even so, there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction – even suspicion – among the public about the role colleges play in society, .... And these views are increasingly linked to partisanship....Read the full article 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 74 (also known as NGC 628) lies some 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces. An island universe of about 100 billion stars with two prominent spiral arms, M74 has long been admired by astronomers as a perfect example of a grand-design spiral galaxy. M74's central region is brought into a stunning, sharp focus in this recently processed image using publicly available data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The colorized combination of image data sets is from two of Webb's instruments NIRcam and MIRI, operating at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. It reveals cooler stars and dusty structures in the grand-design spiral galaxy only hinted at in previous space-based views.

Photo by Robert Eder