Magazine Posts

Capparis spinosa in the Ichkeul National Park. Today is the first day of spring and Tunisia's Independence Day.

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

There are only two moments each year when the Sun lies directly above Earth’s equator. These moments are the equinoxes, when, at any location, the lengths of day and night are roughly equal. The March equinox happens sometime between March 19 and 21. The September equinox occurs sometime between September 21 and 24.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the March equinox marks the beginning of Spring and the September equinox the beginning of Fall. The reverse takes place in the Southern Hemisphere.

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

ven if you live with your head in the clouds, you won’t find a jellyfish like this one very often. The featured image shows a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on March 4. The launch happened 52 minutes before sunrise, and the second stage rocket exhaust plume was high enough in the sky to catch the light of the rising sun, while the photographer was still in the dark. This combination of light and shadow, possible at dawn or dusk, makes the exhaust, mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide, appear as a glowing cloud. It only looks like it's going down, as the rocket follows the curvature of the Earth on its way to space. A related effect is the twilight phenomenon, which causes colorful contrails sometimes mistaken for UFOs. But, in case you are wondering: real jellyfish were sent to space by NASA in the 1990s as part of a science experiment.

Photo by Michael Seeley

Saint Joseph depicted holding a staff with lily blossoms and the Christ Child on a stained-glass window in the Saint Antony church in Urtijëi. Today is St. Joseph's feast day in Western Christianity.

This Photo was taken by Wolfgang Moroder. Feel free to use my photos, but please mention me as the author and send me a message. This image is not in the public domain. Please respect the copyright protection. It may only be used according to the rules mentioned here. This specifically excludes use in social media, if applicable terms of the licenses listed here not appropriate. Please do not upload an updated image here without consultation with the Author. The author would like to make corrections only at his own source. This ensures that the changes are preserved.Please if you think that any changes should be required, please inform the author.Otherwise you can upload a new image with a new name. Please use one of the templates derivative or extract., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A lone tree stands in a quiet meadow in Guadalajara, Spain, silhouetted against the Cygnus region rising above like flames in the night sky. This deep night skyscape is a composite of exposures that reveals a range of brightness and color human eyes can't quite see on their own. Spanning over a thousand times the angular size of the full moon, Cygnus sets the sky afire with active star formation where clouds of gas and dust collapse under gravity until nuclear fusion ignites and new stars are born. These stars ionize the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to glow crimson, while tendrils of interstellar dust absorb some of that light and cast dark shadows across the sky. Cygnus is a trove of celestial treasures, notably the Veil, Crescent, and Pelican nebulae, as well as Cygnus X-1, the first confirmed black hole. Cygnus continues to yield fresh science, including a new three-dimensional model of the Cygnus Loop made possible by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Almost Hyperspace: Random APOD Generator

Photo by 2025 Horacio Lander / AstroHoracio Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

Structures in a field with neighboring Mühlenbach stream near Dülmen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Roland Seifert on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This telescopic close-up shows off the central regions of otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410, captured under backyard skies. Presented in a Hubble color palette, the image combines visible broadband and narrowband data with data from the near-infrared. Below and right of center are two remarkable inhabitants of the interstellar pond of gas and dust. the Tadpoles of IC 410. Partly obscured by foreground dust, the nebula itself surrounds NGC 1893, a young galactic cluster of stars. Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, the intensely hot, bright cluster stars energize the glowing gas. But the cosmic tadpoles themselves are composed of denser cooler gas and dust. Around 10 light-years long they are likely sites of ongoing star formation. Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation their heads are outlined by bright ridges of ionized gas while their tails trail away from the cluster's central young stars. IC 410 lies some 10,000 light-years away, toward the nebula-rich constellation Auriga.

Photo by Nico Carver