Skip to main content

Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What if you could see, separately, all the colors of the Ring? And of the surrounding stars? There's technology for that. The featured image shows the Ring Nebula (M57) and nearby stars through such technology: in this case, a prism-like diffraction grating. The Ring Nebula is seen only a few times because it emits light, primarily, in only a few colors. The two brightest emitted colors are hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue), appearing as nearly overlapping images to the left of the image center. The image just to the right of center is the color-combined icon normally seen. Stars, on the other hand, emit most of their light in colors all across the visible spectrum. These colors, combined, make a nearly continuous streak -- which is why stars appear accompanied by multicolored bars. Breaking object light up into colors is scientifically useful because it can reveal the elements that compose that object, how fast that object is moving, and how distant that object is.

My Heart

Posted by MFish • Profile • 07/21/21 at 11:57AM • Life Stories - Memories • See more by MFish

My heart has been broken,
all of my words will say.
Shattered in pieces, quite small,
by someone I don't really know.
Why does it happen, here to me?
I'm far from the romantic
I was when very young.
A cold place, my Soul
is in now, near thee.
I do not understand why
nor will I still pretend
to know of my emotions
or when it all began.

Run

Posted by MFish • Profile • 07/20/21 at 11:09PM • Life Stories - Memories • See more by MFish

Run from the dark corners of your mind,
though you know there is no escape.
No place to hide or to flee the scene.
The future is bright, but not now,
a world for me, is no longer here.
Her bright future is gone, not to be found.
I will soon, "pack my bag", as I leave
and will think of you as I weep.
What a sad ending, to a beautiful life.
You were the best person, you are my wife.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens.  Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the cosmic head-covering is more like an interstellar bubble, blown with a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. NGC 2359 is located about 15,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Great Overdog. This remarkably sharp image is a mixed cocktail of data from broadband and narrowband filters, capturing not only natural looking stars but details of the nebula's filamentary structures. The star in the center of Thor's Helmet is expected to explode in a spectacular supernova sometime within the next few thousand years. Almost Hyperspace: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Bernard Miller

Photography Series CONTRIBUTOR

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The photographer had this shot in mind for some time. He knew that objects overhead are the brightest -- since their light is scattered the least by atmospheric air. He also that knew the core of our Milky Way Galaxy was just about straight up near midnight around this time of year in South Australia. Chasing his mental picture, he ventured deep inside the Kuipto Forest where tall radiata pines blocked out much of the sky -- but not in this clearing. There, through a window framed by trees, he captured his envisioned combination of local and distant nature. Sixteen exposures of both trees and the Milky Way Galaxy were recorded. Antares is the bright orange star to left of our Galaxy's central plane, while Alpha Centauri is the bright star just to the right of the image center. The direction toward our Galaxy's center is below Antares. Although in a few hours the Earth's rotation moved the Galactic plane up and to the left -- soon invisible behind the timber, his mental image was secured forever -- and is featured here. Follow APOD on Instagram in: English, Farsi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese or Taiwanese

Photo by Will Godward

I've Searched

Posted by MFish • Profile • 07/18/21 at 10:38PM • Other • See more by MFish

I have searched the World over,
from near, far and wide,
searching for my partner,
who rode by my side.
A companion I loved
and defended at any cost,
until the most saddest of days,
when it was her life I lost.
I searched every cranny and flags unfurled,
in search of my love, a beautiful girl.
Thinking I had found her, a short while.
To me this person; It was there,
an instant awareness; I knew it was her.

Powered by Volunteers | 360-794-7959

Hunger impacts all of us | 360-435-1631

Snohomish, Skagit and Island County