Magazine Posts

We lived in Rainer Beach,
South of Seattle, not far away.
School was starting in a week;
my Mother and I decided to seek,
some new clothes for this one.
That was me, her oldest Son.
We got on the bus, she took a seat.
I sat a few feet behind her,
as she was pregnant
and I was in my teens.
I was embarrassed at being seen with her.
I regret that day and what I did.
Not very nice to my Mother's love.
She never said anything to me,
for she was the kindest soul
I ever did see.
Miss you Mom.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The Milky Way was not created by an evaporating lake. The pool of vivid blue water, about 10 meters across, is known as Silex Spring and is located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. Steam rises off the spring, heated by a magma chamber deep underneath known as the Yellowstone hotspot. The steam blurs the image of Venus, making it seem unusually large. Unrelated and far in the distance, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy rises high overhead, a band lit by billions of stars. The featured picture is a 3-image panorama taken last August. If the Yellowstone hotspot causes another supervolcanic eruption as it did 640,000 years ago, a large part of North America would be affected.

Photo by Lori Jacobs

Absent in body,
still here in name.
Life on this planet
won't be the same,
if your aren't near me.
Do you feel the same?

Somewhere, oh somewhere
lodged in this aged head,
I see an image of my
Great, Great Grandfather, Frederick or Fred.
He came to this Nation,
with family intact.
Twin boys, their wives
who were Sisters (Brix),
a daughter and son.
They emigrated to northern Iowa
and Southern Minnesota, (Lyle)
to settle into this new country,
in the year , 1875.

A little vacationing last summer to New Port Oregon.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's all of the commotion in the Tadpole Nebula? Star formation. Dusty emission in the Tadpole Nebula, IC 410, lies about 12,000 light-years away in the northern constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The cloud of glowing gas is over 100 light-years across, sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from embedded open star cluster NGC 1893. Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, bright newly formed cluster stars are seen all around the star-forming nebula. Notable near the image center are two relatively dense streamers of material trailing away from the nebula's central regions. Potentially sites of ongoing star formation in IC 410, these cosmic tadpole shapes are about 10 light-years long. The featured image was taken in infrared light by NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. Discovery + Outreach: Graduate student research position open for APOD

Photo by Francesco Antonucci

I love this time of year
when the hellebores
start to appear.
Here is one on this day
with other buds on their way

From the depths of the bottomless pit
of broken hearts, shattered dreams
and unkept promises, comes a resurgence
of thought, old ideas melted together
with technology that will promise the
Moon to all the dreamers of a new life.
We bog down with the displeasures of
yesterday. The long denials of what we
did to make the World a better place
for all it's citizens.
Then a wanna be, self anointed demagogue,
disrupts the norms and quirky perceptions
of the Golden Rule of treating others
like you want to be treated.
The hatred and vitriolic behavior of
one who leads, spreads out like
morale vomit, by a "Stable Genius",
who is twice removed from human decency.
No loyalty for others. Use them and
discard, with no sense of responsibility.
Backed by a Senate with no control
or courage to make a stand.
Ruination of a long lost Party, runined by
one man, with hundreds being complicit.

I hear her voice,
in the morning hour.
"Hello, are you awake?
are you in there?"
Then she will ask of me,
"What do I do now?"
She has no memory
of what or how
to proceed with her day.
I explain to her, she needs
some clothes and show
her the way down the stairs.
She no longer puts her pills out
as she used to do, so I do that
now, just for her.
I'll fix her breakfast and a cup
of tea, then I will fix
something for me.

Seems like the happenings today
are filled with hatred of some.
Makes me wonder about
the Nation we have become.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Where do comet tails come from? There are no obvious places on the nuclei of comets from which the jets that create comet tails emanate. One of the best images of emerging jets is shown in the featured picture, taken in 2015 by ESA's robotic Rosetta spacecraft that orbited Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (Comet CG) from 2014 to 2016. The picture shows plumes of gas and dust escaping numerous places from Comet CG's nucleus as it neared the Sun and heated up. The comet has two prominent lobes, the larger one spanning about 4 kilometers, and a smaller 2.5-kilometer lobe connected by a narrow neck. Analyses indicate that evaporation must be taking place well inside the comet's surface to create the jets of dust and ice that we see emitted through the surface. Comet CG (also known as Comet 67P) loses in jets about a meter of radius during each of its 6.44-year orbits around the Sun, a rate at which will completely destroy the comet in only thousands of years. In 2016, Rosetta's mission ended with a controlled impact onto Comet CG's surface. Outreach Astronomers: Future APOD writers sought.