Magazine Posts

One Hundred Horses by Giuseppe Castiglione, painted in 1728. Collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. Today is Chinese New Year. In traditional Chinese culture, today marks the beginning of Horse Year.

Giuseppe Castiglione, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Dulcey Lima on Unsplash

I was fortunate to come across a group of Pelicans preening in one of the little bays near the fishing piers in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. These three were lined up nicely, and gave me their best profiles for this shot.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How is RXJ0528+2838 creating such shock waves? A recently discovered white dwarf star, the farther left of the two largest white spots, RXJ0528+2838, was found 730 light-years away from Earth. Most stars, when done fusing nuclei in their cores for energy, become red giant stars, the cores of which live on as faint dense white dwarfs that slowly cool down for the rest of time. White dwarfs are so dense that the only thing that stops them from collapsing further is quantum mechanics. In about 5 billion years, our Sun will become a white dwarf, too. The featured image, obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, shows unexplained bow shocks around RXJ0528+2838, similar to the bow wave of water around a fast-moving ship. Astronomers don’t yet know what is powering these shocks, which have existed for at least 1,000 years. The red, green and blue colors represent trace amounts of glowing hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen gas. Open Science: Browse 3,900+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library

Pedestrian crossing on Market Street at Third Street, San Francisco, as seen from One Kearny St.

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

Vince Lombardi (1913 -1970) American football player, coach, and executive in the National Football League.

Claudio Testa on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What would it be like to fly free in space? About 100 meters from the cargo bay of a space shuttle, Bruce McCandless II was living the dream -- floating farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured, was floating free in space. During Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984, McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk". The MMU worked by shooting jets of nitrogen and was used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit. The MMU was later replaced with the SAFER backpack propulsion unit.

Phnom Bakheng is a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva in Siem Reap Province, Cambodia. It was built at the end of the 9th century, during the reign of King Yasovarman (889–910). Today is Mahashivaratri, a Hindu festival dedicated to the worship of Shiva.

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

Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Roses are red, nebulas are too, and this Valentine's gift is a stunning view! Pictured is a loving look at the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237): a cosmic bloom of bright young stars sitting atop a stem of glowing hot gas. The rose’s blue-white speckles are among the most luminous stars in the galaxy, with some burning millions of times brighter than the Sun. Their stellar winds sculpt the famed rose shape by pushing gas and dust away from the center. Though only a few million years old, these massive stars are already nearing the end of their lives, while dimmer stars embedded in the nebula will burn for billions of years to come. The vibrant red hue comes from hydrogen gas, ionized by the ultraviolet light from the young stars. The rose’s blue-white center is color-mapped to indicate the presence of similarly ionized oxygen. The Rosette Nebula reminds us of the beauty and transformation woven into the fabric of the universe.

Photo by Keighley Rockcliffe

Trier, the Römerbrücke over the Moselle. (Detail to the north side).

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

Courtnie Tosana on Unsplash

My favorite Bay back home in Australia. Im proud of our beautiful beaches. I miss them.