Magazine Posts

For naught
the words
in my head,
perhaps I'd be
the Living Dead.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Fifteen days before impact, the DART spacecraft deployed a small companion satellite to document its historic planetary defense technology demonstration. Provided by the Italian Space Agency, the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids, aka LICIACube, recorded this image of the event's aftermath. A cloud of ejecta is seen near the right edge of the frame captured only minutes following DART's impact with target asteroid Dimorphos while LICIACube was about 80 kilometers away. Presently about 11 million kilometers from Earth, 160 meter diameter Dimorphos is a moonlet orbiting 780 meter diameter asteroid Didymos. Didymos is seen off center in the LICIACube image. Over the coming weeks, ground-based telescopic observations will look for a small change in Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos to evaluate how effectively the DART impact deflected its target.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Is the sky angry with Mount Shasta? According to some ancient legends, the spirits of above and below worlds fight there, sometimes quite actively during eruptions of this enormous volcano in California, USA. Such drama can well be imagined in this deep sky image taken in late June. Evident above the snow-covered peak is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, on the left, and a picturesque sky toward the modern constellations of Scorpius and Ophiuchus, above and to the right. The bright orange star Antares and the colorful rho Ophiuchi cloud complex are visible just to the right of Mount Shasta, while the red emission nebula surrounding the star zeta Ophiuchi appears on the top right. The static earth image in the featured composite was taken during the blue hour, while a two-panel panorama tracking the background sky was taken later that night with the same camera and from the same location. Within a few million years, Antares, some stars in the rho Ophiuchi system, and zeta Ophiuchi will all likely explode as supernovas.

Photo by Ralf Rohner

A lingering silence
across our land,
the outcome of
a failed plan.

Seditionist violence,
to ruin Democracy,
by shameless politicians,
wanting an Oligarchy

Pulling word bundles,
some large, some small,
many great words,
some, not at all.

String the words
in sentence form.
Nothing gallant,
just the norm.

Write out clearly,
so, you can see,
the flow of words
which are orderly.

When you've finished
or if it's done,
take some pride,
if it's the one.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Could humanity deflect an asteroid headed for Earth? Yes. Deadly impacts from large asteroids have happened before in Earth's past, sometimes causing mass extinctions of life. To help protect our Earth from some potential future impacts, NASA tested a new planetary defense mechanism yesterday by crashing the robotic Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft into Dimorphos, a small asteroid spanning about 170-meters across. As shown in the featured video, the impact was a success. Ideally, if impacted early enough, even the kick from a small spacecraft can deflect a large asteroid enough to miss the Earth. In the video, DART is seen in a time-lapse video first passing larger Didymos, on the left, and then approaching the smaller Dimorphos. Although the video ends abruptly with DART's crash, observations monitoring the changed orbit of Dimorphos -- from spacecraft and telescopes around the world -- have just begun.

It was round and furry,
curled into a soft ball.
It wasn't very short,
and certainly not tall.
A miniature Hedgehog,
very slow, ambling away,
to enjoy its life
for one more day.

Grab word bundles,
completing a task.
Nothing to say,
but since you ask.

I'll tell you a story,
one about self
and the adventures of
The Elf on the Shelf.

Late at night
he went creeping,
when all humans
were fast sleeping.

He scurried about
room to room,
without a worry
of impending doom.

Then in wee morning,
before early light,
set in a different location
then the last night.

www.gary-randall.com

Owl not tell you,
this tale of mine,
unless you ply me
with some red wine.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The featured illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. The next smallest ball depicts all of Earth's liquid fresh water, while the tiniest ball shows the volume of all of Earth's fresh-water lakes and rivers. How any of this water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth's surface remain topics of research.

Life's path may be long,
not easy to see,
moving along,
so easily.
Why try so hard,
nothing to do,
but keep on
loving you.