Magazine Posts

Black as night.
Light of day.
Blue of sky
White of clouds.
You've gone away,
To see the World,
A joy to thee,
Recalling memories
Of our history.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How far can you see? The Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, is the most distant object easily seen by the unaided eye. Other denizens of the night sky, like stars, clusters, and nebulae, are typically hundreds to thousands of light-years distant. That's far beyond the Solar System but well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. Also known as M31, the external galaxy poses directly above a chimney in this well-planned deep night skyscape from an old mine in southern Portugal. The image was captured in a single exposure tracking the sky, so the foreground is slightly blurred by the camera's motion while Andromeda itself looms large. The galaxy's brighter central region, normally all that's visible to the naked-eye, can be seen extending to spiral arms with fainter outer reaches spanning over 4 full moons across the sky. Of course in only 5 billion years or so, the stars of Andromeda could span the entire night sky as the Andromeda Galaxy merges with the Milky Way.

Photo by Miguel Claro

There isn't any concept of time,
on any given day,
except to ask of me,
"What are we doing today?"

Where is the beginning?
When will it end?
Must this life go on,
Being a game of let's pretend?

He hopped across the yard.
He was easy to see.
I saw him clearly,
He clearly saw me.
Did he come on a dare,
Or just to antagonize thee?
We'll never know,
For he won't talk for free.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Grand design spiral galaxy Messier 99 looks majestic on a truly cosmic scale. This recently processed full galaxy portrait stretches over 70,000 light-years across M99. The sharp view is a combination of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared image data from the Hubble Space Telescope. About 50 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Bernices, the face-on spiral is a member of the nearby Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Also cataloged as NGC 4254, a close encounter with another Virgo cluster member has likely influenced the shape of its well-defined, blue spiral arms.

This recipe gives you tender carnitas for tacos, burritos, enchiladas, and many other Mexican dishes. Make it in the Instant Pot or pressure cooker! It will take about half the time of other recipes. Click to see Coco Morante's recipe

Gone the long nights,
soon the short days,
as day light will be
ours to soon praise.
From whence came love
and a lost love, too,
as the words in my head,
begin the fondest adieu.
I love you more than
words allow me to say
as the shortness of life
passes one more day.
To see you again,
before our time is gone,
is like a drizzle of rain,
and life will continue on.

Please tell me your story
while I tell you mine,
for the thought of your smile
will be those, so divine.

A piece of string,
a length of twine,
a skank of thread,
a woven line.
A stitch or two
a time to bind,
a soul, yours
to
a soul mine.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How do stars form? Most form in giant molecular clouds located in the central disk of a galaxy. The process is started, influenced, and limited by the stellar winds, jets, high energy starlight, and supernova explosions of previously existing stars. The featured video shows these complex interactions as computed by the STARFORGE simulation of a gas cloud 20,000 times the mass of our Sun. In the time-lapse visualization, lighter regions indicate denser gas, color encodes the gas speed (purple is slow, orange is fast), while dots indicate the positions of newly formed stars. As the video begins, a gas cloud spanning about 50 light years begins to condense under its own gravity. Within 2 million years, the first stars form, while newly formed massive stars are seen to expel impressive jets. The simulation is frozen after 4.3 million years, and the volume then rotated to gain a three-dimensional perspective. Much remains unknown about star formation, including the effect of the jets in limiting the masses of subsequently formed stars. Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How are jets created during star formation? No one is sure, although recent images of the young star system HD 163296 are quite illuminating. The central star in the featured image is still forming but seen already surrounded by a rotating disk and an outward moving jet. The disk is shown in radio waves taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and show gaps likely created by the gravity of very-young planets. The jet, shown in visible light taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT, also in Chile), expels fast-moving gas -- mostly hydrogen -- from the disk center. The system spans hundreds of times the Earth-Sun distance (au). Details of these new observations are being interpreted to bolster conjectures that the jets are generated and shaped, at least in part, by magnetic fields in the rotating disk. Future observations of HD 163296 and other similar star-forming systems may help fill in details. Astrophysicists: Browse 2,500+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library