Magazine Posts

I miss you so,
you're here with me.
Where's your mind now
in this life's reality?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

It somehow survived an explosion that would surely have destroyed our Sun. Now it is spins 30 times a second and is famous for the its rapid flashes. It is the Crab Pulsar, the rotating neutron star remnant of the supernova that created the Crab Nebula. A careful eye can spot the pulsar flashes in the featured time-lapse video, just above the image center. The video was created by adding together images taken only when the pulsar was flashing, as well as co-added images from other relative times. The Crab Pulsar flashes may have been first noted by an unknown woman attending a public observing night at the University of Chicago in 1957 -- but who was not believed. The progenitor supernova explosion was seen by many in the year 1054 AD. The expanding Crab Nebula remains a picturesque expanding gas cloud that glows across the electromagnetic spectrum. The pulsar is now thought to have survived the supernova explosion because it is composed of extremely-dense quantum-degenerate matter. Who was this mystery woman? Please email leads to the APOD editors.

Video by Martin Fiedler

When I was young and so naive
to the ways of this World, ours,
I would fall in love, at a moments notice
with someone I had just met.
Of course it was infatuation, which I felt,
as the blood coursed through my veins.
The newness of a face, with much charm
would bring forth thoughts of love. Then
the cold, heart of reality, would set in,
as you began to realize what
a mess I was in. Perhaps a date
or meet for a Coke and fries,
for when the truth struck you,
is when you became more aware
of your emotions, which flew at your
core, of your vulnerable, unprotected youth.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Stars can be like artists. With interstellar gas as a canvas, a massive and tumultuous Wolf-Rayet star has created the picturesque ruffled half-circular filaments called WR32, on the image left. Additionally, the winds and radiation from a small cluster of stars, NGC 3324, have sculpted a 35 light year cavity on the upper right, with its right side appearing as a recognizable face in profile. This region's popular name is the Gabriela Mistral Nebula for the famous Chilean poet. Together, these interstellar clouds lie about 8,000 light-years away in the Great Carina Nebula, a complex stellar neighborhood harboring numerous clouds of gas and dust rich with imagination inspiring shapes. The featured telescopic view captures these nebulae's characteristic emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms mapped to the red, green, and blue hues of the popular Hubble Palette. New: APOD now available in Bulgarian from Bulgaria

Photo by Ariel Cappelletti

A hole in the ground.
A post in hand,
asks the question,
once more, again.
Should I flee
or go away,
to a life
of lonely exile?
Not for me.
Not my style,
for it won't
make me smile.

A maddening sound.
A mournful noise
on this morning,
the missing toys,
when a child,
much like me,
would be selfish;
not sharing joys.
Play by himself,
no other boys,
now a loner.
What a mess,
it's my life,
I now confess.

I sit, with pen in hand,
all the words I have written,
have come with no plan.
No plan to follow.
No plan for me,
for there will never
be more hypocrisy.
Two hours sleep,
is not the way,
to start off the month
in a sleepy, tired day.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

If our Sun were part of this star cluster, the night sky would glow like a jewel box of bright stars. This cluster, known as M53 and cataloged as NGC 5024, is one of about 250 globular clusters that survive in our Galaxy. Most of the stars in M53 are older and redder than our Sun, but some enigmatic stars appear to be bluer and younger. These young stars might contradict the hypothesis that all the stars in M53 formed at nearly the same time. These unusual stars are known as blue stragglers and are unusually common in M53. After much debate, blue stragglers are now thought to be stars rejuvenated by fresh matter falling in from a binary star companion. By analyzing pictures of globular clusters like the featured image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers use the abundance of stars like blue stragglers to help determine the age of the globular cluster and hence a limit on the age of the universe. M53, visible with a binoculars towards the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices), contains over 250,000 stars and is one of the furthest globulars from the center of our Galaxy.

When the words, in my head,
gather anew,
to form into sentences of one
or a few,
with some sensible writings of
more than two,
be eroded by use and time,
as they do,
for my life's simple pleasure,
caring for you.

I listen, with great aplomb.
Some one said I've written a bomb.
How to react, when you have heard,
the definition of an absurd word?
Respond gracefully, is what you do.
Not with anger, but a thank you.
Thanks for inputting your words, lame,
perhaps I will write a new refrain.

Is it too hard to say hello,
Or to shake the hand, I see?
Or bump an elbow or a fist,
is the greeting, done today,
for all the hugs and kisses,
have left and gone away.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Snow blankets the ground in this serene forest and sky view. Assembled in a 360 degree panoramic projection, the mosaicked frames were captured at January's end along a quiet country road near Siemiony, northeastern Poland, planet Earth. The night was cold and between trees reaching toward the sky shine the stars and nebulae of the northern winter Milky Way. Near zenith is bright star Capella, a mere 43 light-years above the tree tops. Alpha star of the constellation Auriga the Charioteer and part of the winter hexagon asterism, Capella is a well-studied double star system. Follow the Milky Way above and right of Capella and you might spot the familiar stars of Orion in the northern winter night.

Photo by Lukasz Zak