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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

ght billion people are about to disappear in this snapshot from space taken on 2022 November 21. On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft. Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver was used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the spacecraft orbited in the opposite direction of the Moon's orbit around planet Earth. Swinging around the Moon, Orion reached a maximum distance (just over 400,000 kilometers) from Earth on 2022 November 28, exceeding a record set by Apollo 13 for most distant spacecraft designed for human space exploration. The Artemis II mission, carrying 4 astronauts around the moon and back again, is due to launch as early as February 6.

The entrance of the locomotive Hrvatske Željeznice class 2044 with a local train to Zagreb between Turčin and Sveti Ilija, Croatia. July 2009.

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Eduardo Mallmann on Unsplash

Always tried to catch my cat eyes in a way that they were the main objective of the photo. This time i got it.

Lance Anderson on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is about 1,800 light-years distant. It lies just south of Orion in planet Earth's skies toward the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Posing with scattered Milky Way stars, its generally simple spherical shape about 8 light-years in diameter is revealed in this deep telescopic image. The beautiful and complex shapes seen within the cosmic cloud are visually enhanced by the use of long exposures and narrowband filters that capture emission from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Otherwise Abell 7 would be much too faint to be appreciated by eye. A planetary nebula represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience 5 billion years hence, as the nebula's central, once sun-like star shrugs off its outer layers. Abell 7 itself is estimated to be 20,000 years old. But its central star, seen here as a fading white dwarf, is some 10 billion years old.

Photo by Martin Pugh

Northwest view of Yugar village and fields, viewed from Phuktal Gompa. Elevation 3,850 m (12,630 ft)), on the left bank of the Tsarap River (elev. 3,820 m (12,530 ft)). In this arid terrain above the tree line, villagers rely on water from the snow-fed Phu Nala (flowing from centre to bottom) for their fields. Zanskar, Ladakh, India.

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

Attributed to Marcus Aurelius (121 AD - 180 AD) Roman Emperor 

Ricardo Teixeira on Unsplash 

Ocean crashing on beach

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The silhouette of an intriguing dark nebula inhabits this cosmic scene. Lynds' Dark Nebula (LDN) 1622 appears against a faint background of glowing hydrogen gas only visible in long telescopic exposures of the region. In contrast, a brighter reflection nebula, vdB 62, is more easily seen just above the dusty dark nebula. LDN 1622 lies near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, close on the sky to Barnard's Loop, a large cloud surrounding the rich complex of emission nebulae found in the Belt and Sword of Orion. With swept-back outlines, the obscuring dust of LDN 1622 is thought to lie at a similar distance, perhaps 1,500 light-years away. At that distance, this 3 degree wide field of view would span about 100 light-years. Young stars do lie hidden within the dark expanse and have been revealed in Spitzer Space telescope infrared images. Still, the foreboding visual appearance of LDN 1622 inspires its popular name, the Boogeyman Nebula.

Photo by Chris Fellows

Aerial view of 2023 Bishwa Ijtema in Bangladesh. With 5 million adherents, Bishwa Ijtema is the second-largest Muslim gathering in the world.

Rusho127, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Slim Sentinels
Stretching lacy arms
About a slumbrous moon;
Black quivering
Silhouettes,
Tremulous,
Stencilled on the petal
Of a bluebell;
Ink sputtered
On a robin’s breast;
The jagged rent
Of mountains
Reflected in a
Stilly sleeping lake;
Fragile pinnacles
Of fairy castles;
Torn webs of shadows;
And
Printed ’gainst the sky—
The trembling beauty
Of an urgent pine.

Helene Johnson (1906-1995) - Writer and poet during the Harlem Renaissance movement. Johnson published many poems in small magazines during the1920s and early 1930s, including the first and only issue of Fire!!. Although Johnson continued to write, and her work appeared in anthologies, she never published original poetry again. Read more

This poem is in the public domain.

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963) American Poet