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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's happening in the night sky? To help find out, telescopes all over the globe will be pointing into deep space. Investigations will include trying to understand the early universe, finding and tracking Earth-menacing asteroids, searching for planets that might contain extra-terrestrial life, and monitoring stars to help better understand our Sun. The featured composite includes foreground and background images taken in April from a mountaintop on La Palma island in the Canary Islands of Spain. Pictured, several telescopes from the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory are shown in front of a dark night sky. Telescopes in the foreground include, left to right, Magic 1, Galileo, Magic 2, Gran Canarian, and LST. Sky highlights in the background include the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, the constellations of Sagittarius, Ophiuchus and Scorpius, the red-glowing Eagle and Lagoon Nebulas, and the stars Alrami and Antares. Due to observatories like this, humanity has understood more about our night sky in the past 100 years than ever before in all of human history.

Photo by Marcin Rosadziński

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Slanting rays of topaz,
floating through the air,
promises salvation,
removing the despair.

I visited you today, as you
slept in your chair.
I was there for three hours,
you weren't aware.

I've discovered walking
in a crowd,
can be dangerous,
and very loud.

Walking at airports,
no one follows the rules.
Walking on both sides,
one direction, breaks rules.

When walking unattended,
without my cane,
a simple fall
means a lot of pain.

I must keep walking,
as long as I can.
If I'm confined to a chair
I'll be less than a man.

I know that's not true,
I certainly do.
I know how I feel,
uncertain about you.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's happening around this star? No one is sure. CW Leonis is the closest carbon star, a star that appears orange because of atmospheric carbon dispersed from interior nuclear fusion. But CW Leonis also appears engulfed in a gaseous carbon-rich nebula. What causes the nebula's complexity is unknown, but its geometry of shells and arcs are surely intriguing. The featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope details this complexity. The low surface gravity of carbon stars enhances their ability to expel carbon and carbon compounds into space. Some of this carbon ends up forming dark dust that is commonly seen in the nebulas of young star-forming regions and the disks of galaxies. Humans and all Earth-based life are carbon-based, and at least some of our carbon was likely once circulating in the atmospheres of near-death stars like carbon stars.

Between a rock
and a hard place,
we would often say,
life's not a sprint,
it's a long race.