Magazine Posts

May the wind be at your back
as the Sun keeps poking through.
May faith and earthly fortune,
be the best for you.

Not your body, near
but loss of mind.
That is my fear.

What to do
on that day
when your mind
just slips away.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn's "appendages" disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn's unusual protrusions were rings and that when the Earth crosses the ring plane, the edge-on rings will appear to disappear. This is because Saturn's rings are confined to a plane many times thinner, in proportion, than a razor blade. In modern times, the robot Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn frequently crossed Saturn's ring plane during its mission to Saturn, from 2004 to 2017. A series of plane crossing images from 2005 February was dug out of the vast online Cassini raw image archive by interested Spanish amateur Fernando Garcia Navarro. Pictured here, digitally cropped and set in representative colors, is the striking result. Saturn's thin ring plane appears in blue, bands and clouds in Saturn's upper atmosphere appear in gold. Details of Saturn's rings can be seen in the high dark shadows across the top of this image, taken back in 2005. The moons Dione and Enceladus appear as bumps in the rings. Free Presentation: APOD Editor to show best astronomy images of 2019 -- and the decade -- in NYC on January 3

I lie in bed
near your side
and know my feelings
deep inside,
are one of fear
of what to do
for I know
I'm losing you.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Yes, but have you ever seen a sunrise like this? Here, after initial cloudiness, the Sun appeared to rise in two pieces and during partial eclipse, causing the photographer to describe it as the most stunning sunrise of his life. The dark circle near the top of the atmospherically-reddened Sun is the Moon -- but so is the dark peak just below it. This is because along the way, the Earth's atmosphere had an inversion layer of unusually warm air which acted like a gigantic lens and created a second image. For a normal sunrise or sunset, this rare phenomenon of atmospheric optics is known as the Etrucan vase effect. The featured picture was captured two mornings ago from Al Wakrah, Qatar. Some observers in a narrow band of Earth to the east were able to see a full annular solar eclipse -- where the Moon appears completely surrounded by the background Sun in a ring of fire. The next solar eclipse, also an annular eclipse, will occur in 2020 June. Notable Images Submitted to APOD: The Partial Solar Eclipse of 2019 December

Photo by Elias Chasiotis

The Owl calls in the dead of night.
Calls once more then takes flight,
on wings of feathers so soft,
flying to a different tree loft.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's happened to the Sun? Yesterday, if you were in the right place at the right time, you could see the Sun rise partially eclipsed by the Moon. The unusual sight was captured in dramatic fashion in the featured image not only directly, in a sequence of six images, but also in reflection from Soltan Salt Lake in Iran. The almost-white Sun appears dimmer and redder near the horizon primarily because Earth's atmosphere preferentially scatters away more blue light. Yesterday's partial solar eclipse appeared in the sky over much of Asia and Australia, but those with a clear enough sky in a thin band across the Earth's surface were treated to a more complete annular solar eclipse -- where the Moon appears completely surrounded by the Sun in what is known as a ring of fire. The next annular solar eclipse will occur in 2020 June. Notable Images Submitted to APOD: The Partial Solar Eclipse of 2019 December

Photo by Majid Ghohroodi

Lake Louise landscape

Photo by Daniel Roe on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

December's New Moon brought a solar eclipse to some for the holiday season. It also gave beautiful dark night skies to skygazers around the globe, like this moonless northern winter night. In the scene, bright stars of the Winter Hexagon along the Milky Way are rising. Cosy mountain cabins in the snowy foreground are near the village of Oravska Lesna, Slovakia. The shining celestial beacons marking the well-known asterism are Aldebaran, Capella, Pollux (and Castor), Procyon, Rigel, and Sirius. This winter nightscape also reveals faint nebulae in Orion, and the lovely Pleiades star cluster. Slide your cursor over the image to trace the winter hexagon, or just follow this link.

Photo by Petr Horálek

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What is this person doing? In 2012 an annular eclipse of the Sun was visible over a narrow path that crossed the northern Pacific Ocean and several western US states. In an annular solar eclipse, the Moon is too far from the Earth to block out the entire Sun, leaving the Sun peeking out over the Moon's disk in a ring of fire. To capture this unusual solar event, an industrious photographer drove from Arizona to New Mexico to find just the right vista. After setting up and just as the eclipsed Sun was setting over a ridge about 0.5 kilometers away, a person unknowingly walked right into the shot. Although grateful for the unexpected human element, the photographer never learned the identity of the silhouetted interloper. It appears likely, though, that the person is holding a circular device that would enable them to get their own view of the eclipse. The shot was taken at sunset on 2012 May 20 at 7:36 pm local time from a park near Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Tomorrow another annular solar eclipse will become visible, this time along a thin path starting in Saudi Arabia and going through southern India, Singapore, and Guam. However, almost all of Asia with a clear sky will be able to see, tomorrow, at the least, a partial solar eclipse. Free Download: 2020 APOD Calendar

Photo by Colleen Pinski