Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Completing one orbit of our fair planet in 90 minutes the International Space Station can easily be spotted by eye as a very bright star moving through the night sky. Have you seen it? The next time you do, you will have recognized the location of over 20 years of continuous human presence in space. In fact, the Expedition 1 crew to the ISS docked with the orbital outpost some 400 kilometers above the Earth on November 2, 2000. No telescope is required to spot the ISS flashing through the night. But this telescopic field of view does reveal remarkable details of the space station captured as it transited the waning gibbous moon on November 3, just one day after the space age milestone. The well-timed telescopic snapshot also contains the location of another inspirational human achievement. About 400,000 kilometers away, the Apollo 11 landing site on the dark, smooth lunar Sea of Tranquility is to the right of the ISS silhouette.

Photo by Derek Demeter

Hamburger and Macaroni! Others call it goulash or even American chop suey. Whatever you call it, it's great for a midweek meal. Browned ground beef cooked in a tomato onion sauce, mixed in with elbow macaroni. Click the image below to see Elise Bauer's home family recipe at Simply recipes

Why do you ask
about my new task?
Can you not see
I'm wearing a mask?
Do I like it now?
Of course I don't
but it's better to be safe
then rocking the boat.

When you wobble, stumbling your way,
like a drunken sailor, on this new day.
Walk a straight line, if you can,
you aged picture of an old man.
My balance was better, way back then.
It would be great if it was the same again.

The rain splatters against the window glass.
Showers today. They aren't supposed to last.
Another appointment to the doctor today,
Not for me but my wife's turn; her play
A follow up call, to a Geriatric place.
My land, I see another aging face.

Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Bright stars, interstellar clouds of dust and glowing nebulae fill this cosmic scene, a skyscape just north of Orion's belt. Close to the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, the wide field view spans just under 5 degrees or about 10 full moons on the sky. Striking bluish M78, a reflection nebula, is at the lower right. M78's tint is due to dust preferentially reflecting the blue light of hot, young stars. In colorful contrast, the red swath of glowing hydrogen gas streaming through the center is part of the region's faint but extensive emission nebula known as Barnard's Loop. At upper left, a dark dust cloud forms a prominent silhouette cataloged as LDN 1622. While M78 and the complex Barnard's Loop are some 1,500 light-years away, LDN 1622 is likely to be much closer, only about 500 light-years distant from our fair planet Earth.

Photo by Terry Hancock

It is early in the morning,
when I hear a voice say,
it may be the morrow,
when you must go away.
Responding to these words,
"I can't leave tomorrow,
for here I must stay
to care for my beloved."
That's all the words I'll say.

A beat,
a flutter,
caused a mutter
or a murmur,
as an old heart,
began its decline.
A shortness of breath
going up the stairs,
became a worry. Mine.
Congestive heart failure,
was the diagnosis
and medicines were prescribed.
Warfarin, to thin
the blood and avoid
the potential of a stroke.
My life changed, in the moment
as my health had declined,
but now I have found
there is no longer
a burden, as life
has returned to
a normal existence.
Well, sort of.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Over fifty gravitational wave events have now been detected. These events mark the distant, violent collisions of two black holes, a black hole and a neutron star, or two neutron stars. Most of the 50 events were detected in 2019 by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors in the USA and the VIRGO detector in Europe. In the featured illustration summarizing the masses of the first 50 events, blue dots indicate higher-mass black holes while orange dots denote lower-mass neutron stars. Astrophysicists are currently uncertain, though, about the nature of events marked in white involving masses that appear to be in the middle -- between two and five solar masses. The night sky in optical light is dominated by nearby and bright planets and stars that have been known since the dawn of humanity. In contrast, the sky in gravitational waves is dominated by distant and dark black holes that have only been known about for less than five years. This contrast is enlightening -- understanding the gravitational wave sky is already reshaping humanity's knowledge not only of star birth and death across the universe, but properties of the universe itself.