Magazine Posts

Photo shared by Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American

The boom of thunder,
a flash of light,
Winter storms
will take delight,
as the loud noise,
creates a fright
and inside we stay,
through day and night.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The spiky stars in the foreground of this backyard telescopic frame are well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. But the two eye-catching galaxies lie far beyond the Milky Way, at a distance of over 300 million light-years. Their distorted appearance is due to gravitational tides as the pair engage in close encounters. Cataloged as Arp 273 (also as UGC 1810), the galaxies do look peculiar, but interacting galaxies are now understood to be common in the universe. Nearby, the large spiral Andromeda Galaxy is known to be some 2 million light-years away and approaching the Milky Way. The peculiar galaxies of Arp 273 may offer an analog of their far future encounter. Repeated galaxy encounters on a cosmic timescale can ultimately result in a merger into a single galaxy of stars. From our perspective, the bright cores of the Arp 273 galaxies are separated by only a little over 100,000 light-years.

Photo by Jason Guenzel

"How are you feeling right now? Your brain has many jobs, but its most important might be to answer this question"........Read more

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Galactic or open star clusters are young. The swarms of stars are born together near the plane of the Milky Way, but their numbers steadily dwindle as cluster members are ejected by galactic tides and gravitational interactions. Caught in this telescopic frame over three degrees across are three good examples of galactic star clusters, seen toward the southern sky's nautical constellation Puppis. Below and left, M46 is some 5,500 light-years in the distance. Right of center M47 is only 1,600 light-years away and NGC 2423 (top) is about 2500 light-years distant. Around 300 million years young M46 contains a few hundred stars in a region about 30 light-years across. Sharp eyes can spot a planetary nebula, NGC 2438, at about 11 o'clock against the M46 cluster stars. But that nebula's central star is billions of years old, and NGC 2438 is likely a foreground object only by chance along the line of sight to youthful M46. Even younger, aged around 80 million years, M47 is a smaller and looser star cluster spanning about 10 light-years. Star cluster NGC 2423 is pushing about 750 million years in age though. NGC 2423 is known to harbor an extrasolar planet, detected orbiting one of its red giant stars.

Photo by Dave Doctor

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Dark markings and bright nebulae in this telescopic southern sky view are telltale signs of young stars and active star formation. They lie a mere 650 light-years away, at the boundary of the local bubble and the Chamaeleon molecular cloud complex. Regions with young stars identified as dusty reflection nebulae from the 1946 Cederblad catalog include the C-shaped Ced 110 just above and left of center, and bluish Ced 111 below it. Also a standout in the frame, the orange tinted V-shape of the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula (Cha IRN) was carved by material streaming from a newly formed low-mass star. The well-composed image spans 1.5 degrees. That's about 17 light-years at the estimated distance of the nearby Chamaeleon I molecular cloud.

Photo by Robert Eder

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's that on the Sun? Although it may look like a flowing version of the Eiffel Tower, it is a solar prominence that is actually much bigger -- about the height of Jupiter. The huge prominence emerged about ten days ago, hovered over the Sun's surface for about two days, and then erupted -- throwing a coronal mass ejection (CME) into the Solar System. The featured video, captured from the astrophotographer's backyard in Hendersonville, Tennessee, USA, shows an hour time-lapse played both forwards and backwards. That CME did not impact the Earth, but our Sun had unleashed other recent CMEs that not only triggered Earthly auroras, but puffed out the Earth's atmosphere enough to cause just-launched Starlink satellites to fall back. Activity on the Sun, including sunspots, prominences, CMEs and flares, continues to increase as the Sun evolves away from a deep minimum in its 11-year magnetic cycle. Birthday Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

Video by Hawk Wolinski

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884 – 1920)  Italian painter and sculptor known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and figures that were not received well during his lifetime, but later became much sought-after. Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, and moved to Paris in 1906, where he came into contact with such artists as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. Read more
Image: Public Domain CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's different about this Moon? It's the terminators. In the featured image, you can't directly see any terminator -- the line that divides the light of day from the dark of night. That's because the image is a digital composite of 29 near-terminator lunar strips. Terminator regions show the longest and most prominent shadows -- shadows which, by their contrast and length, allow a flat photograph to appear three-dimensional. The original images and data were taken near the Moon by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Many of the Moon's craters stand out because of the shadows they all cast to the right. The image shows in graphic detail that the darker regions known as maria are not just darker than the rest of the Moon -- they are flatter. Dial-A-Moon: Find the phase of the Moon on your birthday.

Break away,
you beautiful one.
Leave me now,
my time is done.