Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Comet dust rained down on planet Earth last week, streaking through dark skies in the annual Perseid meteor shower. The featured picture is a composite of many images taken from the same location over the peak night of the Perseids. The umbrella was not needed as a shield from meteors, since they almost entirely evaporate high in the Earth's atmosphere. Many of the component images featured individual Perseids, while one image featured the foreground near Jiuquan City, Gansu Province, China. The stellar background includes the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, appearing nearly vertical, as well as the planets Jupiter and Saturn on the left. Although the comet dust particles are traveling parallel to each other, the resulting shower meteors clearly seem to radiate from a single point on the sky -- the radiant in the eponymous constellation Perseus. The image captured so long an angular field that the curvature of the sky is visible in the trajectory of the Perseids. Notable APOD Image Submissions: Perseid Meteor Shower 2021

Photo by Luo Hongyang

"The lesson from the past year: Poverty is a policy choice". Read the full article

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Go away.
Go away now.
Search for the truth,
search for the how.
Don't wait for tomorrow,
you must do it now.

Words still rattle
within my head.
Hurtful words,
if I had said
or talked about
the latest;
a slow step into
Alzheimers, for she
knows not the names
of what she sees
or where things
are in the house.
Doesn't know any names
in the abode.
Always needs to be told
which way to go.
There is no memory,
except for...
there is no memory.

No matter where I travel.
No matter where I go,
I will always have my memory
of the beauty of you.

Here I am now,
"long in the tooth."
Hair all white,
skin wrinkled too.
Balance is leaving
and taking a friend,
another good reason
to play, "Let's pretend".
Go away. Go away soon,
as this life may be over
before the next moon.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy are scattered through this eye-catching field of view. From the early hours after midnight on August 13, the 30 second exposure of the night sky over Busko-Zdroj, Poland records the colorful and bright trail of a Perseid meteor. Seen near the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower it flashes from lower left to upper right. The hurtling grain of cosmic sand, a piece of dust from periodic comet Swift-Tuttle, vaporized as it passed through planet Earth's atmosphere at almost 60 kilometers per second. Just above and right of center, well beyond the stars of the Milky Way, lies the island universe known as M31 or the Andromeda Galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is the most distant object easily visible to the naked-eye, about 2.5 million light-years away. The visible meteor trail begins only about 100 kilometers above Earth's surface, though. It points back to the meteor shower radiant in the constellation Perseus off the lower left edge of the frame. Follow this bright perseid meteor trail below and left to the stars of NGC 869and NGC 884, the double star cluster in Perseus. Notable APOD Image Submissions: Perseid Meteor Shower 2021

Photo by Marzena Rogozinska

"Generations of Americans made incredible sacrifices, and we’re going to throw fits about putting a mask over our mouth and nose?"......."Many people told me that the Constitution gives them rights, but not responsibilities. They feel no duty to protect their fellow citizens.".... Read the full article

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore - Licensed under Creative Common License 2.0

The writing I do
is confusing to me.
It's biased away
from a realistic truth.
She cannot help it.
Be kind. Don't yell,
for she is doing her best
and I must also do my best.

A cat,
a dog,
a brindle cow.
A cat companion.
A dog to herd.
A cow to moo.
That is absurd
and yet,
on this hot, hot day,
all three found
a place to stay.
Cool it was,
out of the Sun,
with food and
water for everyone.