Contributor Posts

nate rayfield on Unsplash

The Great Rift, also know as The Dark Rift, or The Dark River, is a section of non-luminous clouds within the Milky Way. I paired this section of the milky way with a lonely tree for a heavier mood. s: 2x2x3 tracked/stacked panorama - 50mm @ f2.8, ISO1600, 120s fg: 20mm @ f11, ISO100, 5s (hoya nd1000x)

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Which way is Comet R3 PanSTARRS going? Not towards the star at the top of the image, because that is Rigel, which, being far in the background, is unrelated to the comet. Not through the nebula in the image middle, because that is the Witch Head Nebula and it, too, is far in the distance -- but not far from Rigel.  Not into northern skies because over the past week Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) has moved into southern skies and is now best visible in Earth's Southern Hemisphere toward the west after sunset.  Angularly, Comet R3 PanSTARRS is slowly moving toward the upper right, night by night, and will soon be in the constellation Orion. Spatially, the comet is now headed out of our Solar System but should remain visible to cameras in southern skies for about a week. The featured image was captured last week near Cerro Paranal in Chile. Growing Gallery: Comet R3 PanSTARRS in 2026

Photo by Jakub Kuřák & Martin Mašek (FZU of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

A Marmelade fly (Episyrphus balteatus) on flight.

Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Richard Bach -  American writer (born June 23, 1936) - He has written numerous flight-related works of fiction and non-fiction. His work include Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970) and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, both of which were among the best sellers in the 1970's. More 

David Moum on Unsplash

"A crazy storm built up east of Colorado Springs, and we rushed out to capture the action. This was a lucky long exposure!"

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A long time ago, in a distant galaxy, a massive star was destroyed in a supernova explosion. The light of this event travelled for tens of millions of years and reached Earth last week as Supernova 2026kid. The featured video shows a time-lapse over three nights of the host galaxy NGC 5907, an edge-on spiral also known as the Splinter or Knife Edge Galaxy, as the supernova appears and becomes brighter. (The occasional streaks are satellites in Earth orbit.) At its brightest, a supernova can outshine the sum of all other stars in its galaxy. Supernova 2026kid appears relatively dim, probably because we are seeing it through the edge-on disk of the galaxy. Such explosions typically happen about once per century in galaxies similar to the Milky Way, and their light can take months to fade away. The brightest supernova in recorded history was SN 1006; it is reported to have been brighter than Venus, and even visible in the sky during daytime.

Watch NASA's Astronomy Video of the Day

Small waterfall on Gunung Lambak, one of several along the stream that flows next to the main path up the mountain. This is a focus stack of 2 photographs, and a neutral density filter was used to allow a long exposure time of 2 seconds.

Dominic Nelson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Sweet pink of northern wood and glen,
E’er first to greet the eyes of men
In early spring,—a tender flower
Whilst still the wintry wind hath power.
How welcome, in the sunny glade,
Or hazel copse, thy pretty head
Oft peeping out whilst still the snow,
Doth here and there, its presence show
Soon leaf and bud quick opening spread
Thy modest petals—white with red
Like some sweet cherub—love’s kind link,
With dress of white, adorned with pink

“One of the first spring wildflowers, the miskodeed or miscodeed (in Ojibwe), or Spring Beauty or Claytonia virginica (in Latin). Typically white with pink veins, though sometimes it is all pink"

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, (1800 –1842) also known as Bamewawagezhikaquay is one of earliest Native American literary writers. She was of Ojibwa and Scots-Irish ancestry and was fluent in both English and Ojibwe. In 1823, she married Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft wrote poetry and translated Ojibwe stories, legends and songs. Most of her was published in adapted, unattributed versions by her husband, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an explorer, ethnologist and writer who eventually became Superintendent for Indian Affairs.
In 2007 Robert Dale Parker A University of Illinois professor of English and American Indian Studies, published a book named after Jane Johnson Schoolcraf,t Ojibwe name translated to English "Woman of the Sound Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft" where "he presents a collection of all Schoolcraft's extant writings along with a cultural and biographical history".This poem is is a translation of an original poem written in Ojibwe. The Poem is in the public domain More

Bill Williams on Unsplash

Pelicans grouped together at White Slough near Vallejo CA.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What does it mean for Saturn and Neptune to be in retrograde? Featured is a composite of images taken over 34 nights from May 2025 to February 2026 tracing Saturn (brighter, foreground) and Neptune (dimmer, background). Over that time, the two planets exhibited retrograde motion, meaning they appeared to move backward in the sky. This apparent backwards motion occurs when Earth overtakes the slower outer planets as they orbit the Sun. Imagine the Solar System is a running track. Earth "runs" faster along the inside of the track compared to the outer planets. As Earth approaches, aligns, and then "laps" the outer planets, they change position from ahead to behind from the Earth's perspective. This perspective shift is what causes the outer planets to change position in the night sky. An animation corresponding to today’s image shows Saturn and Neptune’s months-long dance across the northern night sky. Saturn stepped from the Pisces constellation into Aquarius and back again while Neptune remained in Pisces. This is the closest Saturn and Neptune have been in the sky since their last conjunction in 1989.

Photo by Tunç Tezel (TWAN) Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)