Contributor Posts

Sanderling (Calidris alba) looking for food on the beach of Westkapelle, Netherlands.

Stephan Sprinz, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission region and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, this cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long. The detailed telescopic view features the bright swept-back ridges and pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas that abound in the region. But the dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees. This rendition spans a 1 degree wide field of view though, about the angular size of 2 full moons.

Photo by Giorgio Ferrari

This technical illustration shows early hot air balloon designs. The first untethered manned hot air balloon flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes on this day in 1783.

Warren, Ambrose William, 1781?-1856, engraver., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

ght billion people are about to disappear in this snapshot from space taken on 2022 November 21. On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft. Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver was used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the spacecraft orbited in the opposite direction of the Moon's orbit around planet Earth. Orion entered its distant retrograde orbit on November 25. Swinging around the Moon, Orion reached a maximum distance (just over 400,000 kilometers) from Earth on November 28, exceeding a record set by Apollo 13 for most distant spacecraft designed for human space exploration. The Artemis II mission, carrying 4 astronauts around the moon and back again, is scheduled to launch no earlier than September 2025.

A man in a boat at Ratargul Swamp Forest, Bangladesh

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"One in 5 (20%) U.S. adults get their news from social media influencers, including a much higher share (37%) of adults under 30". More at The Pew Report ➜

"We see right through the unshowered soul living in a car by the beach, or by the Walmart, or by the side of the road. But he’s there, and he used to be somebody. He still is. A firsthand account of homelessness in America". More at Esquire ➜

A solitary mangrove tree on the emerald tropical beach. Havelock Island (Swaraj Dweep), Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andaman Sea, Indian Ocean.

Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's happening with these clouds? While it may seem that these long and thin clouds are pointing toward the top of a hill, and that maybe a world-famous observatory is located there, only part of that is true. In terms of clouds, the formation is a chance superposition of impressively periodic undulating air currents in Earth's lower atmosphere. Undulatus, a type of Asperitas cloud, form at the peaks where the air is cool enough to cause the condensation of opaque water droplets. The wide-angle nature of the panorama creates the illusion that the clouds converge over the hill. In terms of land, there really is a world-famous observatory at the top of that peak: the Carnegie Science's Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The two telescope domes visible are the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes. The featured coincidental vista was a surprise but was captured by the phone of a quick-thinking photographer in late September. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

Photo by Yuri Beletsky