Magazine Posts

Scarlet flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus) in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

Giles Laurent, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Welcome to Kudos365 Weekly History Challenge. Test your knowledge of history and see how many of the questions you can answer correctly. A new History Challenge is released every Saturday.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The Mare Orientale, Latin for Eastern Sea, is one of the most striking large scale lunar features. The youngest of the large lunar impact basins it's very difficult to see from an earthbound perspective. Still, captured on July 7 during a period of favorable tilt, or libration of the lunar nearside, the Eastern Sea can be found at the upper right in this sharp telescopic view. In the image, the large lunar mare is extremely foreshortened and stretches along the Moon's western edge. Formed by the impact of an asteroid over 3 billion years ago and nearly 1000 kilometers across, the impact basin's concentric circular features are ripples in the lunar crust. But they are a little easier to spot in more direct images of the region taken from lunar orbit. So why is the Eastern Sea at the Moon's western edge? The Mare Orientale lunar feature was named before 1961. That's when the convention labeling east and west on lunar maps was reversed.

Photo by The Mare Orientale

Cacomantis sonneratii (Banded Bay Cuckoo) in Ajodhya Hills, West Bengal, India.

Tisha Mukherjee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Brian Tracy - Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author. www.briantracy.com

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This Cosmic Bat wishes you a happy Summerween! This mid-year celebration of Halloween transcends hemispheres, even though summer in the Northern hemisphere is winter in the South. Contrary to its eery aura, the Cosmic Bat Nebula (LDN 43), not to be confused with the Bat Nebula (NGC 6995), is a vibrant birthplace for stars. A bit of young starlight peeks through the dense clouds of gas and dust that make up the Cosmic Bat’s 12 lightyear wingspan. The ultraviolet light from the young stars energizes the nebula’s hydrogen gas, causing it to glow an ominous red. The jet of glowing hydrogen gas emerging from the bat’s head hints at the star formation hidden within.

Photo by Humbert Cédric Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

St. Jude's Church, Chinnathurai, built on sandy soil near the beach, cemetery to the left. Thoothoor, Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu, India.

Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sometimes we can all use a little help from a friend. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory needs a boost to stay in orbit after almost 22 years of service. This video shows an artist's visualization of the Swift Boost Mission: The Katalyst's LINK spacecraft was launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on July 3 and it is now en route to rendezvous with Swift and boost it to a higher orbit over the course of the next several months. This type of maneuver has never been attempted before. If successful, it will be the technology demonstration of a new key capability to extended the lifetime of spacecraft in low Earth orbit, whose orbits decay over time. Swift has an array of instruments that observe the most energetic explosions in the Universe in gamma-rays, X-rays and ultraviolet, and the unique ability to repoint in their direction within tens of seconds. Astronomers around the world, and indeed all fans of cosmic explosions, are anxiously hoping for a successful mission!

Watch NASA's Astronomy Video of the Day

The Lower Vistula Valley in Kokocko, Poland.

Mariusz Guć, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Where can you find dragons fighting in the night sky? In the southern constellation of the Altar: Ara. The dragons are, of course, actually made of suggestively shaped gas and dust. The celestial home of the mythological battling beasts is cataloged as NGC 6188 and located about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud. Massive, young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association were formed there only a few million years ago, sculpting the dark shapes and powering the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. Joining NGC 6188 on this cosmic canvas, visible toward the lower right, is unusual emission nebula NGC 6164, also created by one of the region's massive stars. This impressively wide field picture, captured from Queensland, Australia, spans over 2 degrees (four full Moons).

Photo by Rod Prazeres

Seed pods of a Silene dioica. Focus stack of 40 photos.

Dominicus Johannes Bergsma., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.