Contributor Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on the sky is the Pleiades, a bright cluster that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. The Pleiades lies only about 450 light years away, formed about 100 million years ago, and will likely last about another 250 million years. Our Sun was likely born in a star cluster, but now, being about 4.5 billion years old, its stellar birth companions have long since dispersed. The Pleiades star cluster is pictured over Half Dome, a famous rock structure in Yosemite National Park in California, USA. The featured image is a composite of 28 foreground exposures and 174 images of the stellar background, all taken from the same location and by the same camera on the same night in October 2019. After calculating the timing of a future juxtaposition of the Pleiades and Half Dome, the astrophotrographer was unexpectedly rewarded by an electrical blackout, making the background sky unusually dark.

Photo by Dheera Venkatraman

My mind is dull,
eyes are glazed,
as I contemplate,
the state of our life.
Drastically changed,
selling our homestead
and resigning to
a life of Senior Care,
in a Memory Care
facility for my wife,
as I attempt to exist
in this World of Sadness.

Otters, playing in chocolate pools,
chasing marshmallow fish.
Multi-colored, rounded stones,
of chocolate candies, formed
a pathway to the playground,
enclosed by a red licorice, fence.
Shrubs of colored cotton candy,
provided an entrance to all.

My beloved one, wants
to stay close to me
and every waking moment,
it's where she will be.
I'm now on a slow
ride of losing my sanity.

Long was the day,
short was the night.
To bed at 1 am,
awake at 2:30.
Dozed till 4:30.
Got up.
Why am I tired?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

OK, but why can't you combine images from Webb and Hubble? You can, and today's featured image shows one impressive result. Although the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has a larger mirror than Hubble, it specializes in infrared light and can't see blue -- only up to about orange. Conversely, the Hubble Space Telescope (Hubble) has a smaller mirror than Webb and can't see as far into the infrared as Webb, but can image not only blue light but even ultraviolet. Therefore, Webb and Hubble data can be combined to create images across a wider variety of colors. The featured image of four galaxies from Stephan's Quintet shows Webb images as red and also includes images taken by Japan's ground-based Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Because image data for Webb, Hubble, and Subaru are made freely available, anyone around the world can process it themselves, and even create intriguing and scientifically useful multi-observatory montages. Stephan's Quintet from just: Webb, Hubble

Strip off the sins
of our fathers.
Bare the naked Soul,
The babble of voices echos
in this large room.
Echos repeat the noise,
elevating to a rumble.
The day will pass slowly,
as we near the late
stages of this life.
Soon the breath is gone
as the Soul seeps,
from the Mortal being.
Life is no more.

Bit my thumb,
that was dumb,
infected now,
I'll soon succumb.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What are those spots on Jupiter? Largest and furthest, just right of center, is the Great Red Spot -- a huge storm system that has been raging on Jupiter possibly since Giovanni Cassini's likely notation of it 357 years ago. It is not yet known why this Great Spot is red. The spot toward the lower left is one of Jupiter's largest moons: Europa. Images from Voyager in 1979 bolster the modern hypothesis that Europa has an underground ocean and is therefore a good place to look for extraterrestrial life. But what about the dark spot on the upper right? That is a shadow of another of Jupiter's large moons: Io. Voyager 1 discovered Io to be so volcanic that no impact craters could be found. Sixteen frames from Voyager 1's flyby of Jupiter in 1979 were recently reprocessed and merged to create the featured image. Forty-five years ago this August, Voyager 1 launched from Earth and started one of the greatest explorations of the Solar System ever. Free Download: Voyager Posters

I am in the bathroom, ready for a new
day. I hear a loud noise and then
a plea of "Please help me" startled me ,
I go to the door and
do not hear the plea.
I hurriedly dress and seek an attendent
to check on the neighbor. They find
her, call Medic One. She is taken to
the hospital, treated and returns, in a week.
She is 93 and appears in good form.

My life, these past few months
have been spent in a
Memory Care Facility.
I moved here, to support my wife
and to honor her request of my
being near her.
I am considered to be an Independent,
as I do not need any assistance or aid
from the staff.
This is a happy place. The support staff
are very caring, in spite of a few
residents who will verbally abuse them.
This has been a positive, learning experience
for me as I have been allowed to participate
and be a witness to the care provided to
those friends and family who are dealing
with Dementia and Alzheimer disease.

The tears
seep from
my eyes.
There's no
sobbing nor,
any sighs.
Only memories,
I have
of you.
Why does
God take,
those you
so, love?
Where is
the mercy,
from above?
There isn't
a fairness,
is what
I see.
If there
was, he'd
have taken,
me.