Contributor Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Now outbound after its perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on October 29, Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third known interstellar object to pass through our fair Solar System. Its greenish coma and faint tails are seen against a background of stars in the constellation Virgo in this view from planet Earth, recorded with a small telescope on November 14. But this interstellar interloper is the subject of an on-going, unprecedented Solar System-wide observing campaign involving spacecraft and space telescopes from Earth orbit to the surface of Mars and beyond. And while the comet from another star-system has recently grown brighter, you'll still need a telescope if you want to see 3I/ATLAS from planet Earth. It's now above the horizon in November morning skies and will make its closest approach to Earth, a comfortable 270 million kilometers distant, around December 19.

Photo by Rolando Ligustri

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka are the bright bluish stars from east to west (upper right to lower left) along the diagonal in this cosmic vista. Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie from 700 to 2,000 light-years away, born of Orion's well-studied interstellar clouds. In fact, clouds of gas and dust adrift in this region have some surprisingly familiar shapes, including the dark Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula near Alnitak at the upper right. The famous Orion Nebula itself is off the right edge of this colorful starfield. The telescopic frame spans almost 4 degrees on the sky.

Photo by Aygen Erkaslan

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sometimes the dark dust of interstellar space has an angular elegance. Such is the case toward the far-south constellation of Chamaeleon. Normally too faint to see, dark dust is best known for blocking visible light from stars and galaxies behind it. In this 11.4-hour exposure, however, the dust is seen mostly in light of its own, with its strong red and near-infrared colors creating a brown hue. Contrastingly blue, a bright star Beta Chamaeleontis is visible on the upper right of the V, with the dust that surrounds it preferentially reflecting blue light from its primarily blue-white color. All of the pictured stars and dust occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy with one notable exception: a white spot just below Beta Chamaeleontis is the galaxy IC 3104, which lies far in the distance. Interstellar dust is mostly created in the cool atmospheres of giant stars and dispersed into space by stellar light, stellar winds, and stellar explosions such as supernovas.

Photo by Xinran Li & Houbo Zhao

"Aging is inevitable but unpredictable. Aging is an unpredictable, highly individualized process that varies
depending on a person’s genetics, medical history, cognitive status and socioeconomic factors. More at The Conversation ➜

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What has happened to Comet Lemmon's tail? The answer is blowing in the wind — the wind from the Sun in this case. This continuous outflow of charged particles from the Sun has been quite variable of late, as the Sun emits bursts of energy, CMEs, that push out and deflect charged particles emitted by the comet itself. The result is a blue hued ion tail for Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) that is not only impressively intricate but takes some unusual turns. This long-duration composite image taken from Alfacar, Spain last month captured this inner Solar System ionic tumult. Comet Lemmon is now fading as it heads out away from the Earth and Sun and back into the outer Solar System.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) -  Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics. He is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. and served as consul in 63 BC. His influence on the Latin language was immense. It is generally believed that he wrote wrote more than three-quarters of the Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime. 

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967) Born Dorothy Rothschild, was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist with a reputation for sharp wit. Some of her works have been set to music. The Poem "Inventory" was published in 1926 and it is now in the Public domain

Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (1917 – 1977) was an American poet born into a Boston influential family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Growing up in Boston also informed his poems, which were frequently set in Boston and the New England region. The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, particularly in his early work.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Jupiter looks a bit different in ultraviolet light. To better interpret Jupiter's cloud motions and to help NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft understand the planetary context of the small fields that it sees, the Hubble Space Telescope was being directed to regularly image the entire Jovian giant. The colors of Jupiter being monitored go beyond the normal human visual range to include both ultraviolet and (not pictured) infrared light. Featured from 2017, Jupiter appears different in near ultraviolet light, partly because the amount of sunlight reflected back is distinct, giving differing cloud heights and latitudes discrepant brightnesses. In the near UV, Jupiter's poles appear relatively dark, as does its Great Red Spot and a smaller (optically) white oval to the right. The String of Pearl storms farther to the right, however, are brightest in near ultraviolet, and so here appear (false-color) pink. Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede appears on the upper left. Juno continues on a looping 33-day orbit around Jupiter, while Earth-orbiting Hubble is aging and now relies on a single stabilizing gyroscope.

Ursula K. Le Guin ( 1929 – 2018) was an American author born in Berkley, California. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction.  Her work was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. She is frequently described as an author of science fiction and has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le  Guin said that she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist". More 

In a church which is furnish'd with mullion and gable,
With altar and reredos, with gargoyle and groin,
The penitents' dresses are sealskin and sable,
The odour of sanctity's eau-de-Cologne.
But only could Lucifer, flying from Hades,
Gaze down on this crowd with its panniers and paints,
He would say, as he look'd at the lords and the ladies,
"Oh, where is All-Sinners', if this is All-Saints'?"

Edmund Yates (1831 - 1894) British journalist, novelist and dramatist. Born in Edinburgh. In 1854 he published his first book "My Haunts and their Frequenters", after which followed a succession of novels and plays.Yates was perhaps best known as proprietor and editor, under the pen-name of "Atlas", of The World Society newspaper.

Public Domain Poem

"Yasha Levine, a freelance journalist who has reported on the California Central Valley in depth, teamed up with filmmaker Rowan Wernham to direct the documentary Pistachio Wars. The film argues that billionaires Lynda and Stewart Resnick are harming California’s environment as they artwash their damage". More at Hyperallergic ➜