Skip to main content

Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A mere 280 light-years from Earth, tidally locked, Jupiter-sized exoplanet WASP-43b orbits its parent star once every 0.8 Earth days. That puts it about 2 million kilometers (less than 1/25th the orbital distance of Mercury) from a small, cool sun. Still, on a dayside always facing its parent star, temperatures approach a torrid 2,500 degrees F as measured at infrared wavelengths by the MIRI instrument on board the James Webb Space Telescope. In this illustration of the hot exoplanet's orbit, Webb measurements also show nightside temperatures remain above 1,000 degrees F. That suggests that strong equatorial winds circulate the dayside atmospheric gases to the nightside before they can completely cool off. Exoplanet WASP-43b is now formally known as Astrolábos, and its K-type parent star has been christened Gnomon. Webb's infrared spectra indicate water vapor is present on the nightside as well as the dayside of the planet, providing information about cloud cover on Astrolábos.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a grand design spiral galaxy. The large galaxy of over 100 billion stars has well-defined spiral arms, similar to our own Milky Way. One of the brightest members of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, M100, also known as NGC 4321 is 56 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. In this telescopic image, the face-on grand design spiral shares a nearly 1 degree wide field-of-view with slightly less conspicuous edge-on spiral NGC 4312 (at upper right). The 21 hour long equivalent exposure from a dark sky site near Flagstaff, Arizona, planet Earth, reveals M100's bright blue star clusters and intricate winding dust lanes which are hallmarks of this class of galaxies. Measurements of variable stars in M100 have played an important role in determining the size and age of the Universe.

Photo by Drew Evans

With A Surly Wind

Posted by MFish • Profile • 05/02/24 at 01:32AM • Other • See more by MFish

With a surly wind,
and eddies of dust,
may I ask of you,
Is it me you trust?

A casual meeting,
or coffee for two,
I'll tell you about me,
you could talk about you.

Sit. Try not to be,
nervous or afraid
of a possible relationship.
Waters are deep. I'll wade.

Does it make sense,
to sit and wait,
or go to a place,
where we could participate?

Hunger impacts all of us | 360-435-1631

Snohomish, Skagit and Island County

Read more from Pepe's Painting LLC

Powered by Volunteers | 360-794-7959