Contributor Posts

Tallinn old town during sunrise. View from Patkul viewing platform.

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

Welcome to Kudos365 Weekly History Challenge. Test your history  knowledge and see how many of the history questions you can answer correctly. A new updated History Challenge is released every Saturday.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Nā ʻUhane Māhoe Huki Pū i ke Ola, is the Hawaiian name given to this image of a pair of spiral galaxies locked in a mutual gravitational embrace. Some 200 million light-years distant toward the high flying constellation Pegasus their spectacular, galactic scale merger is captured in sharp detail in the image from the 8.1 meter Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, Hawai‘i. The galaxy pair, known as NGC 7253 and Arp 278, was chosen as a target, researched, and given a Hawaiian name by high school students in the joint Gemini Observatory and University of Hawaiʻi Project Hōkūlani internship program. The name translates to "The Twin Spirits Pulling Together Creating Life". That's both culturally and astronomically appropriate for galaxy collisions that trigger a cosmic maelstrom of star formation from galactic reservoirs of elemental building blocks of life. These merging galaxies are found within a region of Pegasus identified as the Hawaiian navigational constellation Ka Lupe o Kawelo. APOD's main NASA site is moving: From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

Café and restaurant “Marienhöhe”, Norderney, Lower Saxony, Germany.

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

Martin Luther King Jr. - (1929 - 1968) American Christian minister, activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How do animals react to a total solar eclipse? The featured image shows a stork roosting on her nest in Poland at a partial phase of the recent total solar eclipse. If you are lucky enough to experience a total eclipse somewhere quiet and close to nature, you may be able to notice unusual daytime animal behaviors. During totality, you may hear nighttime sounds like crickets and frogs and see fireflies. In the dark, most birds are quiet. Thinking that it is time to go to bed, ducks and other waterfowl prepare to sleep on one leg, with their heads turned around and their beaks tucked into their back feathers (they don't really sleep with their heads tucked under one wing). When sunlight returns at the end of totality, songbirds greet the new "morning" with their dawn songs. The crickets and frogs go quiet again. Animals and people resume their lives, only briefly disturbed by the chance alignment of our Sun and Moon. APOD's main NASA site is moving : From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod

Photo by Włodzimierz Bubak Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)

Anna, with Max supporting his mother, decorates a sign for the Almabtrieb. Freiburger Alpe, Bavaria, Germany, September 2024.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Pretend you have never heard of a solar eclipse. The Sun’s behavior has been predictable your whole life. One day, you witness the sky transform as it does in today’s spliced image spanning two hours of the August 12, 2026 solar eclipse. The Sun disappears, leaving behind a bright, empty ring. What would you think had happened? Humans have interpreted eclipses in countless ways throughout history, embedding beliefs about connection, rebirth, or danger into culture. “Eclipse” comes from the Greek word “ékleipsis” meaning “abandonment”. In ancient Greece, the solar eclipse marked the anger of the gods and the Sun abandoning humanity. To the Diné people, this celestial alignment is a time of renewal. Out of respect and to avoid the danger of sunlight, the Diné stay inside until the Sun and Moon separate. The Batammariba people of Benin and Togo believe that the Sun and Moon fight during an eclipse, so the community encourages peace among themselves. Eclipses are an example of the longstanding connection between astronomy and society. Gallery: Solar Eclipse of 2026 August 12

Photo by Javier Castro Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)