Magazine Posts

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of the year.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850 – October 30, 1919) was an American author and poet. Her works include Poems of Passion and Solitude, which contains the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone." Her autobiography, "The Worlds and I", was published in 1918, a year before her death. Read more

🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Yes, but can your comet tail do this? No, and what you are seeing is not the tail of a comet. The picture features a cleverly overlayed time-lapse sequence of a group of satellites orbiting Earth together in June. Specifically, these are Starlink communications satellites in low Earth orbit reflecting back sunlight before sunrise to Inner Mongolia, China. Although the satellites appear to the human eye as points, the 20-second-long camera exposures caused them to appear as short streaks. Currently there are over 9000 Starlinks in orbit, with more being launched nearly every week. Other satellite constellations are also being planned. Explore the Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Wang Chao

View of old town and walls of Sorano, Italy from the south.

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

"A Denver MD has spent 2 decades working with hospitalized patients experiencing homelessness − here’s what she fears and what gives her hope"  More at The Conversation ➜

View from South Camano Island just before sunset

Joe deSousa on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex but appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and a higher speed than expected from a free explosion. The featured image was taken by an amateur astronomer in Leesburg, Florida, USA over three nights last month. It was captured in three primary colors but with extra detail provided by specific emission by hydrogen gas. The Crab Nebula spans about 10 light years. In the Nebula's very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star as massive as the Sun but with only the size of a small town. The Crab Pulsar rotates about 30 times each second. Explore the Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Alan Chen

Pirogue running on the Mekong in front of an island hosting a Samanea saman (rain tree) and other trees, at sunset with pink clouds, seen from Don Det, Si Phan Don, Laos.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. And almost every spot in this jewel-box of an image from the Hubble Space Telescope is a star. Now, some stars are more red than our Sun, and some more blue -- but all of them are much farther away. Although it takes light about 8 minutes to reach Earth from the Sun, NGC 1898 is so far away that it takes light about 160,000 years to get here. This huge ball of stars, NGC 1898, is called a globular cluster and resides in the central bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) -- a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way Galaxy. The featured multi-colored image includes light from the infrared to the ultraviolet and was taken to help determine if the stars of NGC 1898 all formed at the same time or at different times. There are increasing indications that most globular clusters formed stars in stages, and that, in particular, stars from NGC 1898 formed shortly after ancient encounters with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and our Milky Way Galaxy. Space Telescopes Live: Where are Hubble and Webb looking right now?

Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown.

Ford Madox Brown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.