Contributor Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar System. Acquiring its first sunlit views of far northern Saturn in late 2012, the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera recorded this stunning, false-color image of the ringed planet's north pole. The composite of near-infrared image data results in red hues for low clouds and green for high ones, giving the Saturnian cloudscape a vivid appearance. This and similar images show the stability of the hexagon even 20+ years after Voyager. Movies of Saturn's North Pole show the cloud structure maintaining its hexagonal structure while rotating. Unlike individual clouds appearing like a hexagon on Earth, the Saturn cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal length. Four Earths could fit inside the hexagon. Beyond the cloud tops at the upper right, arcs of the planet's eye-catching rings are tinted bright blue.

Photo by NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team

A small, bunny, rabbit
and European brown Hare
went on a date,
heaven knows where.

Out to the garden
where the was plenty of food,
for who knew what Ms. Rabbit,
thought would taste good.

Carrots were first on the list,
the #1 item on the menu.
Came next the lettuce,
which was much easier to chew.

Pausing to munch
on a carrot or two,
asking the waitress,
what should I do?

Pick something sweet,
and easy to chew,
is what I would choose,
try it you've nothing to lose.

What they ate was
scrumptious food,
knowing the next time,
would set the mood.

How selfish am I,
my wife languishes,
in Memory Care,
and I'm not near her.

I still wrestle with the guilt
of abandonment. It's what,
I feel.
Friends, relatives tell me
I need to take care of myself.
I don't disagree, however, I have
loved and lived with her for 66years.

How do I disengage?
I wish there were a simple
answer. I know there isn't one,
but that does not preclude me
from feeling this way.

Life sucks,
mostly for she.
I'm not living
within any normalcy.

A shortness of breath,
a gasping for air,
are warning signs,
you must be aware.

Go to a doctor
or check yourself in,
to an urgent care unit,
take care and you'll win.

Lighting flashing overhead.
I awoke with a start,
not knowing where I was,
in my chair but not the cart.

The cart, was not needed,
a bad dream was gone,
no need to worry,
I was not in the great beyond.

Her hair,
long and shiny,
to her shoulders fell.
Blonde was the color,
blue were her eyes.

The voice of an angel,
soft, like a summer breeze.
The way she could
control the setting
with the words of a song.

Her name, was Lenora,
love was the game.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Recorded during 2017, timelapse sequences from the International Space Station are compiled in this serene video of planet Earth at Night. Fans of low Earth orbit can start by enjoying the view as green and red aurora borealis slather up the sky. The night scene tracks from northwest to southeast across North America, toward the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida coast. A second sequence follows European city lights, crosses the Mediterranean Sea, and passes over a bright Nile river in northern Africa. Seen from the orbital outpost, erratic flashes of lightning appear in thunder storms below and stars rise above the planet's curved horizon through a faint atmospheric airglow. Of course, from home you can always check out the vital signs of Planet Earth Now.

"In the years following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island nation for South Florida, setting the stage for what would become one of the most important linguistic convergences in all of the Americas....Today, the vast majority of the population is bilingual....and there is a lot of Spanish – and a lot of English – being spoken in Miami....This  sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish is creating a new dialect". More at The Conversation ➜

A new law lets the state withhold funds from libraries that remove books or don’t follow American Library Association guidelines. More at Bloomberg ➜