Magazine Posts

Silvered rays of light
dance across the surface
of the small pond.
Dew drenched Cattails
jutting from the shore.
Green Milfoil lays on the surface,
solid except for the trail of a duck.

A small Fungi, perhaps,
growing from the space
on our deck.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why does this galaxy have a ring of bright blue stars? Beautiful island universe Messier 94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici). A popular target for Earth-based astronomers, the face-on spiral galaxy is about 30,000 light-years across, with spiral arms sweeping through the outskirts of its broad disk. But this Hubble Space Telescope field of view spans about 7,000 light-years across M94's central region. The featured close-up highlights the galaxy's compact, bright nucleus, prominent inner dust lanes, and the remarkable bluish ring of young massive stars. The ring stars are all likely less than 10 million years old, indicating that M94 is a starburst galaxy that is experiencing an epoch of rapid star formation from inspiring gas. The circular ripple of blue stars is likely a wave propagating outward, having been triggered by the gravity and rotation of a oval matter distributions. Because M94 is relatively nearby, astronomers can better explore details of its starburst ring. Astrophysicists: Browse 2,000+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library

Photo by ESA/HubbleNASA

Where do you go now
on this journeys end?
Do you seek loneliness or
time spent with a friend?

A ray of light from above
Falls softly, upon my love.
The Moon, a pale shade of blue,
Sends all it's love down to you.
Enjoy the moment, while you can
For the life we know but don't understand.

The path, that I once did tread,
covered now with leaves all dead.
A path, both narrow and sometimes wide
we could walk until evening tide.
A path young people could meet,
now muffled with shuffling feet.
A most beautiful ground in the park,
sheltered with tree limbs and trunk bark.
Now on this site, this Winter's day,
no invitation needed, just stay away.

The blanket of wet leaves
lying upon the cold ground,
will nourish all the new growth
that will soon abound.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Does Mars have a north star? In long exposures of Earth's night sky, star trails make concentric arcs around the north celestial pole, the direction of our fair planet's axis of rotation. Bright star Polaris is presently the Earth's North Star, close on the sky to Earth's north celestial pole. But long exposures on Mars show star trails too, concentric arcs about a celestial pole determined by Mars' axis of rotation. Tilted like planet Earth's, the martian axis of rotation points in a different direction in space though. It points to a place on the sky between stars in Cygnus and Cepheus with no bright star comparable to Earth's north star Polaris nearby. So even though this ruddy, weathered landscape is remarkably reminiscent of terrain in images from the martian surface, the view must be from planet Earth, with north star Polaris near the center of concentric star trails. The landforms in the foreground are found in Qinghai Province in northwestern China.

Photo by Dengyi Huang

I am amazed at the tenacity of this plant.
Under the kitchen window, next to the siding.

Moved these under the kitchen window,
Close to the house, for protection.
They have survived Frost
And they still hang on

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon's icy surface likely hides a deep, global ocean. Galileo's Europa image data has been remastered here, using improved new calibrations to produce a color image approximating what the human eye might see. Europa's long curving fractures hint at the subsurface liquid water. The tidal flexing the large moon experiences in its elliptical orbit around Jupiter supplies the energy to keep the ocean liquid. But more tantalizing is the possibility that even in the absence of sunlight that process could also supply the energy to support life, making Europa one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth. What kind of life could thrive in a deep, dark, subsurface ocean? Consider planet Earth's own extreme shrimp.