Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The beautiful Trifid Nebula is a cosmic study in contrasts. Also known as M20, it lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our galaxy, the Trifid does illustrate three different types of astronomical nebulae; red emission nebulae dominated by light from hydrogen atoms, blue reflection nebulae produced by dust reflecting starlight, and dark nebulae where dense dust clouds appear in silhouette. But the red emission region roughly separated into three parts by obscuring dust lanes is what lends the Trifid its popular name. Pillars and jets sculpted by newborn stars, below and left of the emission nebula's center, appear in famous Hubble Space Telescope close-up images of the region. The Trifid Nebula is about 40 light-years across. Just too faint to be seen by the unaided eye, it almost covers the area of a full moon in planet Earth's sky.

Photo by Mike Selby

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

When do cloud bottoms appear like bubbles? Normally, cloud bottoms are flat. This is because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a very specific height. As water droplets grow, an opaque cloud forms. Under some conditions, however, cloud pockets can develop that contain large droplets of water or ice that fall into clear air as they evaporate. Such pockets may occur in turbulent air near a thunderstorm. Resulting mammatus clouds can appear especially dramatic if sunlit from the side. The mammatus clouds pictured here, lasting only a few minutes, were photographed over Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, just after a storm in 2012. Meteor Shower Tonight: Peak of the Perseids

Photo by Michael F Johnston

"Inspectors repeatedly found manufacturing and device quality problems with the HeartWare heart pump. But the FDA did not penalize the company, and patients had the device implanted on their hearts without knowing the facts." Read Article

Opinion:  A patient should have easy access to accurate and timely information relating to the risks associated with the major decision about to be made; instead of blindly relying on a  "regulatory system which generally serves patients well" and believing that “most companies are well intentioned.” If nothing else, intentions are not facts. 

“There is one book that I would rather have produced than all my novels,” Willa Cather rued in her most candid interview about creativity. That book was Rocky Mountain Flowers: An Illustrated Guide For Plant-Lovers and Plant-Users (public library| public domain by the pioneering plant ecologist and botanical artist Edith Clements (1874 –1971). Read more

When your head is spinning;
your brain is numb,
for the love, now lost,
tore a hole in my heart.

A tubeless tire.
A rusty chain,
piled atop
a bicycle frame.
What a story,
this must be,
with missing parts
in a weedy patch
of dried hanks of grass.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What does fire look like in space? In the gravity on Earth, heated air rises and expands, causing flames to be teardrop shaped. In the microgravity of the air-filled International Space Station (ISS), however, flames are spheres. Fire is the rapid acquisition of oxygen, and space flames meet new oxygen molecules when they float by randomly from all directions -- creating the enveloping sphere. In the featured image taken in the ISS's Combustion Integration Rack, a spherical flame envelopes clusters of hot glowing soot. Without oxygen, say in the vacuum of empty space, a fire would go out immediately. The many chemical reactions involved with fire are complex, and testing them in microgravity is helping humanity not only to better understand fire -- but how to put out fire, too.

A lost horizon,
the crashing Sun,
which sinks into
the day of oblivion.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's the best way to watch a meteor shower? This question might come up later this week when the annual Perseid Meteor Shower peaks. One thing that is helpful is a dark sky, as demonstrated in the featured composite image of last year's Perseids. Many more faint meteors are visible on the left image, taken through a very dark sky in Slovakia, than on the right image, taken through a moderately dark sky in the Czech Republic. The band of the Milky Way Galaxy bridges the two coordinated images, while the meteor shower radiant in the constellation of Perseus is clearly visible on the left. In sum, many faint meteors are lost through a bright sky. Light pollution is shrinking areas across our Earth with dark skies, although inexpensive ways to combat this might be implemented. Notable Perseids Submissions to APOD: 2018, 2019, 2020

Photo by Tomas SlovinskySlovakiaPetr HoralekCzech RepublicInstitute of Physics in Opava

Do you keep putting things off when you know you shouldn’t? Get going by understanding the psychology of irrational delay - Read more

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

rthlings typically watch meteor showers by looking up. But this remarkable view, captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down. From Garan's perspective onboard the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid meteors streak below, swept up dust left from comet Swift-Tuttle heated to incandescence. The glowing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60 kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash is right of frame center, below the curving limb of the Earth and a layer of greenish airglow, just below bright star Arcturus. Want to look up at a meteor shower? You're in luck, as the 2021 Perseids meteor shower peaks this week. This year, even relatively faint meteors should be visible through clear skies from a dark location as the bright Moon will mostly absent. Notable Perseids Submissions to APOD: 2018, 2019, 2020