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A re-print

For your pleasure

Just plain drinking, 6 years ago

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Arthur Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag's Object formed, including its nearly perfectly round ring of stars and gas, remains unknown. Genesis hypotheses include a galaxy collision billions of years ago and the gravitational effect of a central bar that has since vanished. The featured photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed using an artificially intelligent de-noising algorithm. Observations in radio waves indicate that Hoag's Object has not accreted a smaller galaxy in the past billion years. Hoag's Object spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 600 million light years away toward the constellation of the Snake (Serpens). Many galaxies far in the distance are visible toward the right, while coincidentally, visible in the gap at about seven o'clock, is another but more distant ring galaxy.

Written for My Beloved, 6 years ago.

Why do you cry?
Why are you sad?
I lost the best friend,
I have ever had.

Someday, I want to,
live for myself and
travel some more,
across this great land.

You had a great life,
be thankful for that.
(I don't know, will
that bring her back?)

Why are you sad?
She's in a better place now.
I know this isn't true but I
understand she isn't suffering.

I still mourn,
what else can I do?
I love my wife, my partner and
best friend too.

I know the reason,
but I don't understand,
why it had to end this way.

Words which crawl
or fly by
a page,
go awry!

Standing in the corner,
your hat upon your head.
Why do you stay away?
Did you think I had fled?

Alongside me you came.
You left me, like a Lord,
saying nothing,
not even a single word.

How can I explain,
if I don't know you?
Not knowing where to be,
where to go, what to do.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A cosmic dust grain plowing through the upper atmosphere much faster than a falling leaf created this brilliant meteor streak. In a serendipitous moment, the sublime night sky view was captured from the resort island of Capri, in the Bay of Naples, on the evening of February 8. Looking across the bay, the camera faces northeast toward the lights of Naples and surrounding cities. Pointing toward the horizon, the meteor streak by chance ends above the silhouette of Mount Vesuvius. One of planet Earth's most famous volcanos, an eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii in 79 AD.

Photo by Wang Letian

"Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that how we name things changes what we see, changes the seer" .....Read more at the Marginalian