Contributor Posts

When rivers flow,
with water deep,
while sunlight,
plays hide and seek,

towards the horizon, far,
looking West,
it's when we know,
our life is best.

Worry not, about
the morrows now,
enjoy your time.
You all know how.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A mere 280 light-years from Earth, tidally locked, Jupiter-sized exoplanet WASP-43b orbits its parent star once every 0.8 Earth days. That puts it about 2 million kilometers (less than 1/25th the orbital distance of Mercury) from a small, cool sun. Still, on a dayside always facing its parent star, temperatures approach a torrid 2,500 degrees F as measured at infrared wavelengths by the MIRI instrument on board the James Webb Space Telescope. In this illustration of the hot exoplanet's orbit, Webb measurements also show nightside temperatures remain above 1,000 degrees F. That suggests that strong equatorial winds circulate the dayside atmospheric gases to the nightside before they can completely cool off. Exoplanet WASP-43b is now formally known as Astrolábos, and its K-type parent star has been christened Gnomon. Webb's infrared spectra indicate water vapor is present on the nightside as well as the dayside of the planet, providing information about cloud cover on Astrolábos.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a grand design spiral galaxy. The large galaxy of over 100 billion stars has well-defined spiral arms, similar to our own Milky Way. One of the brightest members of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, M100, also known as NGC 4321 is 56 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. In this telescopic image, the face-on grand design spiral shares a nearly 1 degree wide field-of-view with slightly less conspicuous edge-on spiral NGC 4312 (at upper right). The 21 hour long equivalent exposure from a dark sky site near Flagstaff, Arizona, planet Earth, reveals M100's bright blue star clusters and intricate winding dust lanes which are hallmarks of this class of galaxies. Measurements of variable stars in M100 have played an important role in determining the size and age of the Universe.

Photo by Drew Evans

I looked, I saw,
I took a chance.
Now I'm faced with,
an aborted romance.

Was it right,
or was it wrong?
The answer must be,
I don't belong,

in the life I see,
for it must be,
someone else,
not with thee.

The World fears,
many things,
but does not fear,
church bell rings.

Will you be there,
when all is done?
If yes, you're,
the only one.

Within the deep forest,
where trees and ferns grow,
I'd like to be there now,
to watch the Sunset show,

of a lovely horizon,
beautiful and bright,
while waiting for,
the darkest night.

We traveled miles.
We traveled far,
looking oh looking,
to find where you are.

I know you are gone,
over four months now,
as I struggle to be strong,
fulfilling our marriage vow.

I love you more than
simple words can say,
and still miss you,
after you've gone away.

With a surly wind,
and eddies of dust,
may I ask of you,
Is it me you trust?

A casual meeting,
or coffee for two,
I'll tell you about me,
you could talk about you.

Sit. Try not to be,
nervous or afraid
of a possible relationship.
Waters are deep. I'll wade.

Does it make sense,
to sit and wait,
or go to a place,
where we could participate?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

To some, this nebula looks like the head of a fish. However, this colorful cosmic portrait really features glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds in IC 1795, a star forming region in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula's colors were created by adopting the Hubble color palette for mapping narrowband emissions from oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur atoms to blue, green and red colors, and further blending the data with images of the region recorded through broadband filters. Not far on the sky from the famous Double Star Cluster in Perseus, IC 1795 is itself located next to IC 1805, the Heart Nebula, as part of a complex of star forming regions that lie at the edge of a large molecular cloud. Located just over 6,000 light-years away, the larger star forming complex sprawls along the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. At that distance, IC 1795 would span about 70 light-years across. Open Science: Browse 3,300+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library

Photo by Roberto Colombari & Mauro Narduzzi