Contributor Posts

Valentina Curini on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What are these little red dots (LRDs)? Nobody knows. Discovered only last year, hundreds of LRDs have now been found by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe. Although extremely faint, LRDs are now frequently identified in deep observations made for other purposes. A wide-ranging debate is raging about what LRDs may be and what importance they may have. Possible origin hypotheses include accreting supermassive black holes inside clouds of gas and dust, bursts of star formation in young dust-reddened galaxies, and dark matter powered gas clouds. The highlighted images show six nearly featureless LRDs listed under the JWST program that found them, and z, a distance indicator called cosmological redshift. Additionally, searches are underway in our nearby universe to try to find whatever previous LRDs might have become today.

Poznań Town Hall with Christmas decorations.

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

Like silver lamps in a distant shrine,
The stars are sparkling bright
The bells of the city of God ring out,
For the Son of Mary is born to-night.
The gloom is past and the morn at last
Is coming with orient light.

Never fell melodies half so sweet
As those which are filling the skies,
And never a palace shone half so fair
As the manger bed where our Saviour lies;
No night in the year is half so dear
    As this which has ended our sighs.

Now a new Power has come on the earth,
    A match for the armies of Hell:
A Child is born who shall conquer the foe,
    And all the spirits of wickedness quell:
For Mary’s Son is the Mighty One
    Whom the prophets of God fortell.

The stars of heaven still shine as at first
    They gleamed on this wonderful night;
The bells of the city of God peal out
    And the angels’ song still rings in the height;
And love still turns where the Godhead burns
    Hid in flesh from fleshly sight.

Faith sees no longer the stable floor,
    The pavement of sapphire is there
The clear light of heaven streams out to the world
    And the angels of God are crowding the air,
And heaven and earth, through the spotless birth
    Are at peace on this night so fair.

William Chatterton Dix (1837 - 1898) was an English writer of hymns and carols. He was born in Bristol,  He study for a mercantile career, and became manager of a maritime insurance company in Glasgow where he spent most of his life. Few modern writers have shown so signal a gift as his for the difficult art of hymn-writing. His original hymns are found in most modern hymn-books. Some of his carols, such as The Manger Throne have been very popular. His hymns and carols also include "As with Gladness Men of Old". What Child is this?, To Thee, O Lord, Our Hearts We Raise and Alleluia! Sing to Jesus.

Annie Spratt on Unsplash

JŽ 06-018 steam locomotive gear, museum steam locomotive, Central station Ljubljana, Slovenia.

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

magnezis magnestic on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Yesterday the Sun reached its southernmost point in planet Earth's sky. Called a solstice, many cultures mark yesterday's date as a change of seasons -- from autumn to winter in Earth's Northern Hemisphere and from spring to summer in Earth's Southern Hemisphere. The featured image was taken just before the longest night of the 2025 northern year at Stonehenge in United Kingdom. There, through stones precisely placed 4,500 years ago, a 4.5 billion year old large glowing orb is seen setting. Even given the precession of the Earth's rotational axis over the millennia, the Sun continues to set over Stonehenge in an astronomically significant way.

Photo by English Heritage, Josh Dury

Snow on Ayase river by Shōtei Takahashi. 1915 woodcut print from the Rijksmuseum collection.

Shōtei Takahashi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.