Contributor Posts

Aerial view of 2023 Bishwa Ijtema in Bangladesh. With 5 million adherents, Bishwa Ijtema is the second-largest Muslim gathering in the world.

Rusho127, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Slim Sentinels
Stretching lacy arms
About a slumbrous moon;
Black quivering
Silhouettes,
Tremulous,
Stencilled on the petal
Of a bluebell;
Ink sputtered
On a robin’s breast;
The jagged rent
Of mountains
Reflected in a
Stilly sleeping lake;
Fragile pinnacles
Of fairy castles;
Torn webs of shadows;
And
Printed ’gainst the sky—
The trembling beauty
Of an urgent pine.

Helene Johnson (1906-1995) - Writer and poet during the Harlem Renaissance movement. Johnson published many poems in small magazines during the1920s and early 1930s, including the first and only issue of Fire!!. Although Johnson continued to write, and her work appeared in anthologies, she never published original poetry again. Read more

This poem is in the public domain.

Alex Koch on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is an enormous barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That's twice the size of our own barred spiral Milky Way. This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals stunning details of this magnificent spiral in infrared light. Webb's field of view stretches about 60,000 light-years across NGC 1365, exploring the galaxy's core and bright newborn star clusters. The intricate network of dusty filaments and bubbles is created by young stars along spiral arms winding from the galaxy's central bar. Astronomers suspect the gravitational field of NGC 1365's bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, funneling gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the active galaxy's central, supermassive black hole.

Trier, Caspar-Olevian-Saal, Trier. Entrance to the Caspar-Olevian-Saal.

Agnes Monkelbaan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Trison Thomas on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow. The featured picture, an attempt to show how Io would appear in the "true colors" perceptible to the average human eye, was taken in 1999 July by the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. Io's colors derive from sulfur and molten silicate rock. The unusual surface of Io is kept very young by its system of active volcanoes. The intense tidal gravity of Jupiter stretches Io and damps wobbles caused by Jupiter's other Galilean moons. The resulting friction greatly heats Io's interior, causing molten rock to explode through the surface. Io's volcanoes are so active that they are effectively turning the whole moon inside out. Some of Io's volcanic lava is so hot it glows in the dark.

Giacomo Raibolini painted this image of Saint Sebastian in the likeness of his father, Francesco Francia. Today is Saint Sebastian's feast day in the Catholic Church and Oriental Orthodox Church.

Giacomo Raibolini, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Victor Rodriguez on Unsplash