Magazine Posts

Life is exciting.
Love is grand,
when your life
is on demand.
Nothing works now,
like it did before,
when life makes demands
and nothing more.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What will the Moon phase be on your birthday this year? It is hard to predict because the Moon's appearance changes nightly. As the Moon orbits the Earth, the half illuminated by the Sun first becomes increasingly visible, then decreasingly visible. The featured video animates images and altitude data taken by NASA's Moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to show all 12 lunations that appear this year, 2022 -- as seen from Earth's northern (southern) hemisphere. A single lunation describes one full cycle of our Moon, including all of its phases. A full lunation takes about 29.5 days, just under a month (moon-th). As each lunation progresses, sunlight reflects from the Moon at different angles, and so illuminates different features differently. During all of this, of course, the Moon always keeps the same face toward the Earth. What is less apparent night-to-night is that the Moon's apparent size changes slightly, and that a slight wobble called a libration occurs as the Moon progresses along its elliptical orbit.

There is an enjoyment,
when I visit my wife,
for she will say,
"I love you" many times,
which breaks my heart
to see her slip away
from our life's reality.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The Great Carina Nebula is home to strange stars and iconic nebulas. Named for its home constellation, the huge star-forming region is larger and brighter than the Great Orion Nebula but less well known because it is so far south -- and because so much of humanity lives so far north. The featured image shows in great detail the northern-most part of the Carina Nebula. Visible nebulas include the semi-circular filaments surrounding the active star Wolf-Rayet 23 (WR23) on the far left. Just left of center is the Gabriela Mistral Nebula consisting of an emission nebula of glowing gas (IC 2599) surrounding the small open cluster of stars (NGC 3324). Above the image center is the larger star cluster NGC 3293, while to its right is the relatively faint emission nebula designated Loden 153. The most famous occupant of the Carina Nebula, however, is not shown. Off the image to the lower right is the bright, erratic, and doomed star star known as Eta Carinae -- a star once one of the brightest stars in the sky and now predicted to explode in a supernova sometime in the next few million years.

Photo by Roberto Colombari

"In choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young, the company has made its new priorities clear to listeners"....... "The withdrawal of two of the most important living musicians obviously dents the company’s value proposition, but the bigger impact may simply be that an alarm has been sounded. Spotify faces strong competition for capturing the world’s eardrums, and Apple, Amazon, Tidal, Bandcamp, and the local record store can make a new pitch: Spend your dollars on music, not on dangerous nonsense" Read more

A vassal,
a vessel,
a journey
through life,
in search
of someone,
who is
my wife.
Do not
fear me
for willing
am I
to reach
the stars,
when I
must die,
for living
a life,
all alone
is not
a choice.

I am sitting here,
in the tree,
branches helping
to conceal me.
I am hoping I hear
and then see,
more food morsels
which will be
my salvation
and to feed me.

The clouds were
all dark and ominous.
Dark were they,
an angry Cumulous.

What is this life,
when God takes away,
a beautiful person,
from a life of joy,
leaving a shell,
mindless but loving,
who is unable to
care for herself?
Don't tell me
about a just God.
I don't see him.

A battle of words,
sets the tone
in writing,
when living alone.
There is no joy,
which I can see,
when you aren't here,
living with me.

"Trees, hummingbirds, snails, Stoicism, storytelling, Orwell’s roses, the crucible of consciousness, the end of the universe, and more trees" . Read more

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found, the Fornax Cluster is one of the closest clusters of galaxies. About 62 million light-years away, it is almost 20 times more distant than our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy, and only about 10 percent farther than the better known and more populated Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Seen across this two degree wide field-of-view, almost every yellowish splotch on the image is an elliptical galaxy in the Fornax cluster. Elliptical galaxies NGC 1399 and NGC 1404 are the dominant, bright cluster members toward the upper left (but not the spiky foreground stars). A standout barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is visible on the lower right as a prominent Fornax cluster member.

Photo by Marco Lorenzi