Public Posts

Explore major historical events from today or any day on Kudos 365.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sure, that figure-8 shaped curve you get when you mark the position of the Sun in Earth's sky at the same time each day over one year is called an analemma. On the left, Earth's figure-8 analemma was traced by combining wide-angle digital images recorded during the year from December 2011 through December 2012. But the shape of an analemma depends on the eccentricity of a planet's orbit and the tilt of its axis of rotation, so analemma curves can look different for different worlds. Take Mars for example. The Red Planet's axial tilt is similar to Earth's, but its orbit around the same sun is more eccentric (less circular) than Earth's orbit. As seen from the Martian surface, the analemma traced in the right hand panel is shaped more like a tear drop. The Mars rover Opportunity captured the images used over the Martian year corresponding to Earth dates July 2006 to June 2008. Of course, each world's solstice dates still lie at the top and bottom of their different analemma curves. The last Mars northern summer solstice was May 29, 2025. Our fair planet's 2025 northern summer solstice is at June 21, 2:42 UTC.

Photo by Tunc Tezel

"In an ideal world, getting medical care should be straightforward: You work with your doctor to figure out what ails you, then your doctor recommends a treatment that addresses the problem",........"Increasingly, insurance companies are using AI algorithms to decide which healthcare treatments to cover....."These coverage algorithms are a total black box – companies refuse to reveal how they work, often claiming they are trade secrets". More

European Table Tennis Championships in the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle as part of the European Championships 2022 in Munich: Timo Boll, Germany.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

dmonton, Alberta, Canada, planet Earth lies on the horizon. in this stack of panoramic composite images. In a monthly time series arranged vertically top to bottom the ambitious photographic project follows the annual north-south swing of sunrise points, from June solstice to December solstice and back again. It also follows the corresponding, but definitely harder to track, Full Moon rise. Of course, the north-south swing of moonrise runs opposite sunrise along the horizon. But these rising Full Moons also span a wider range on the horizon than the sunrises. That's because the well-planned project (as shown in this video) covers the period June 2024 to June 2025, centered on a major lunar standstill. Major lunar standstills represent extremes in the north-south range of moonrise driven by the 18.6 year precession period of the lunar orbit.

Photo by Luca Vanzella

Deelerwoud, (the eastern part.) Oak with emerging young leaves and a dead tree in front of it.

Dominicus Johannes Bergsma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Mark Twain - Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name, Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, publisher, and lecturer.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the northern springtime constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. The deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in fainter, gigantic, bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past.

Photo by Vikas Chander

Rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus), Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German polymath and writer. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language. His work as a poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theater director and critic has had a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day. He is known for works like "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and "Faust". More