Contributor Posts

Hello my siblings.
Hello to my friends.
Say goodbye to this year
of ending events.
Throw out the old,
retain all which is new,
for the year 2022
is now upon you.
Time to stop and pause,
accessing your life,
once more again,
avoiding strangers,
stay 6 feet away.
Get vaccinated
and keep wearing your mask.
Be good to others,
It's what we do.
I'll keep this memory,
in my heart, for you.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

very Full Moon of 2021 shines in this year-spanning astrophoto project, a composite portrait of the familiar lunar nearside at each brightest lunar phase. Arranged by moonth, the year progresses in stripes beginning at the top. Taken with the same camera and lens the stripes are from Full Moon images all combined at the same pixel scale. The stripes still looked mismatched, but they show that the Full Moon's angular size changes throughout the year depending on its distance from Kolkata, India, planet Earth. The calendar month, a full moon name, distance in kilometers, and angular size is indicated for each stripe. Angular size is given in minutes of arc corresponding to 1/60th of a degree. The largest Full Moon is near a perigee or closest approach in May. The smallest is near an apogee, the most distant Full Moon in December. Of course the full moons of May and November also slid into Earth's shadow during 2021's two lunar eclipses.

Photo by Soumyadeep Mukherjee

Don Smith Photography www.donsmithphotography.com
Click here to see Don Smith's favorite images of 2021

I look through the glass pane,
in the store front.
Others like me, a young boy of twelve,
had smeared the glass with their noses,
like I was doing now.
Look in the window, of this large
Christmas Display in the Bon Marche
or Frederick and Nelson's.
This event, not Christmas, but the window display,
was every young childs fantasy trip.
Toy train locomotives, were pulling
their cars, across country with bridges
and rivers too. It was a time for
a real view of your imagination.
Always a choice or you could pick,
these two displays in the Holiday Season.
It was all up to you.
Happy Holidays.

Ridges of embers,
glowed in the night.
There was no power,
but we had a light,
a lantern tall and bright,
powered by batteries, "D",
and the dimming light
from the woods dying glow.

High hang the lights
across timbered posts,
Lighting the way,
where we love most.
Across a patio wide,
barren of plant growth,
lays the Divinity,
The Holy Ghost.

Stay close to me,
I'll keep you safe.
Matters not, if adult
or a very small waif.

It was dark
beneath the stair.
A dusty smell
of cobwebs, dry,
alone was I,
but mustn't cry,
for you're brave.
I do know,
you are afraid,
of spiders.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This timelapse gif tracks the James Webb Space Telescope as it streaks across the stars of Orion on its journey to a destination beyond the Moon. Recorded on December 28, 12 consecutive exposures each 10 minutes long were aligned and combined with a subsequent color image of the background stars to create the animation. About 2.5 days after its December 25 launch, JWST cruised past the altitude of the Moon's orbit as it climbed up the gravity ridge from Earth to reach a halo orbit around L2, an Earth-Sun Lagrange point. Lagrange points are convenient locations in space where the combined gravitational attraction of one massive body (Earth) orbiting another massive body (Sun) is in balance with the centripetal force needed to move along with them. So much smaller masses, like spacecraft, will tend to stay there. One of 5 Lagrange points, L2 is about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth directly along the Earth-Sun line. JWST will arrive at L2 on January 23, 29 days after launch. While relaxing in Earth's surface gravity you can follow the James Webb Space Telescope's progress and complicated deployment online.

Photo by Malcolm Park

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Comet Leonard, brightest comet of 2021, is at the lower left of these two panels captured on December 29 in dark Atacama desert skies. Heading for its perihelion on January 3 Comet Leonard's visible tail has grown. Stacked exposures with a wide angle lens (also displayed in a reversed B/W scheme for contrast), trace the complicated ion tail for an amazing 60 degrees, with bright Jupiter shining near the horizon at lower right. Material vaporizing from Comet Leonard's nucleus, a mass of dust, rock, and ices about 1 kilometer across, has produced the long tail of ionized gas fluorescing in the sunlight. Likely flares on the comet's nucleus and buffeting by magnetic fields and the solar wind in recent weeks have resulted in the tail's irregular pinched and twisted appearance. Still days from its closest approach to the Sun, Comet Leonard's activity should continue. The comet is south of the Solar System's ecliptic plane as it sweeps through the southern constellation Microscopium.

Photo by Daniele Gasparri

I know your life
has come un-done.
The one you love,
is still the one,
who cherished you back,
when you were down.
No questions asked of the
blind faith, that was,
given to thee. Now here
you are, moving her away,
for better treatment
of this I pray.