Skip to main content

Magazine Posts

I awake to a dull roar
of noise; the crashing of waves
on the sand of the beach floor.
The pungent smell of the Sea;,
assaults my senses; a fine mist
of salty spray, cools my skin.
My shoes are off, cold sand.
I feel its hardness.
A foot away, the sand is dry and fluffy
the wind blows stinging my face.
The squawking noise of Seagulls sail,
in windy updrafts, searching the beach.
Sunlight blossoms from the Eastern sky,
as shadows creep , slowly past
the sounds and smells are locked
in my mind, as my shaky fingers,
scribe these memories, onto the page
of another notebook, with pen
in hand, I recall again and again.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Atmospheric refraction flattened the solar disk and distorted its appearance in this telescopic view of an Atlantic sunrise on June 10. From Belmar, New Jersey on the US east coast, the scene was recorded at New Moon during this season's annular solar eclipse. The Moon in partial silhouette gives the rising Sun its crescent shape reminding some of the horns of the devil (or maybe a flying canoe ...). But at its full annular phase this eclipsed Sun looked like a ring of fire in the heavens. June's annular solar eclipse followed on the heels of the total lunar eclipse of late May's Full Moon. Of course, that total lunar eclipse was a dramatic red Blood Moon eclipse.

Photo by Madhup Rathi

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a about 25 light-years across blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. A triumvirate of astroimagers ( Joe, Glenn, Russell) created this sharp portrait of the cosmic bubble. Their telescopic collaboration collected over 30 hours of narrow band image data isolating light from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The oxygen atoms produce the blue-green hue that seems to enshroud the detailed folds and filaments. Visible within the nebula, NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away.

Photo by Joe Navara

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well-known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, a dark sky, and some sophisticated image processing. The resulting digitally-enhanced image shows many breathtaking features. Diagonal across the image right is part of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Visible there are vast clouds of bright stars and long filaments of dark and intricate dust. Rising vertically on the image left are dark dust bands known as the Dark River. Several of the bright stars on the left are part of Scorpius' head and claws, and include the bright star Antares. Numerous red emission nebulas, blue reflection nebulas, and dark filaments became visible as the deep 17-hour expo image developed. Scorpius appears prominently in southern skies after sunset during the middle of the year.

Photo by Stefan Lenz

Snohomish, Skagit and Island County

Hunger impacts all of us | 360-435-1631

Powered by Volunteers | 360-794-7959