Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's main ring was discovered in 1979 by NASA's passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but its origin was then a mystery. Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, however, confirmed the hypothesis that this ring was created by meteoroid impacts on small nearby moons. As a small meteoroid strikes tiny Metis, for example, it will bore into the moon, vaporize, and explode dirt and dust off into a Jovian orbit. The featured image of Jupiter in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope shows not only Jupiter and its clouds, but this ring as well. Also visible is Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) -- in comparatively light color on the right, Jupiter's large moon Europa -- in the center of diffraction spikes on the left, and Europa's shadow -- next to the GRS. Several features in the image are not yet well understood, including the seemingly separated cloud layer on Jupiter's right limb. Celestial Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

Inane questions,
comments galore.
State your need clearly
or ask questions, no more,
for I choose not to answer,
the same question, again.

Low the light
in the forest,
so near,
step with care,
as you enter
the Glade
and your reward
will be a promise made.

The Demons of a life's
journey, hang in the air.
Haphazardly hanging
they are everywhere.
Moments in this short life,
will happen, so please care,
of those things around you.
Pay attention. Be aware.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on the sky is the Pleiades, a bright cluster that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. The Pleiades lies only about 450 light years away, formed about 100 million years ago, and will likely last about another 250 million years. Our Sun was likely born in a star cluster, but now, being about 4.5 billion years old, its stellar birth companions have long since dispersed. The Pleiades star cluster is pictured over Half Dome, a famous rock structure in Yosemite National Park in California, USA. The featured image is a composite of 28 foreground exposures and 174 images of the stellar background, all taken from the same location and by the same camera on the same night in October 2019. After calculating the timing of a future juxtaposition of the Pleiades and Half Dome, the astrophotrographer was unexpectedly rewarded by an electrical blackout, making the background sky unusually dark.

Photo by Dheera Venkatraman

My mind is dull,
eyes are glazed,
as I contemplate,
the state of our life.
Drastically changed,
selling our homestead
and resigning to
a life of Senior Care,
in a Memory Care
facility for my wife,
as I attempt to exist
in this World of Sadness.

Otters, playing in chocolate pools,
chasing marshmallow fish.
Multi-colored, rounded stones,
of chocolate candies, formed
a pathway to the playground,
enclosed by a red licorice, fence.
Shrubs of colored cotton candy,
provided an entrance to all.

My beloved one, wants
to stay close to me
and every waking moment,
it's where she will be.
I'm now on a slow
ride of losing my sanity.

Long was the day,
short was the night.
To bed at 1 am,
awake at 2:30.
Dozed till 4:30.
Got up.
Why am I tired?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

OK, but why can't you combine images from Webb and Hubble? You can, and today's featured image shows one impressive result. Although the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has a larger mirror than Hubble, it specializes in infrared light and can't see blue -- only up to about orange. Conversely, the Hubble Space Telescope (Hubble) has a smaller mirror than Webb and can't see as far into the infrared as Webb, but can image not only blue light but even ultraviolet. Therefore, Webb and Hubble data can be combined to create images across a wider variety of colors. The featured image of four galaxies from Stephan's Quintet shows Webb images as red and also includes images taken by Japan's ground-based Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Because image data for Webb, Hubble, and Subaru are made freely available, anyone around the world can process it themselves, and even create intriguing and scientifically useful multi-observatory montages. Stephan's Quintet from just: Webb, Hubble