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Dreary Color

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Centered on maximum eclipse, these two total lunar eclipse sequences look almost identical. Yet the one shown on top is composed of images recorded in February 2008, while at the bottom is the recent March 2026 total eclipse of the Moon. Why are they so similar? Because these two total lunar eclipses are from the same Saros cycle. The Saros cycle was discovered historically from observations of the Moon's orbit. With a period of 18 years, 11 and 1/3 days, the cycle predicts when the Sun, Earth, and Moon all return to the same relative geometry for a lunar (or solar) eclipse. Eclipses separated by one Saros period belong to the same numbered Saros series, in this case Saros 133. So expect the next lunar eclipse in Saros 133 to be a repeat of this year's March 3 eclipse. You can watch the next Saros 133 total lunar eclipse on March 13, 2044. Growing Gallery: Total Lunar Eclipse of March 3

Photo by Tunc Tezel

A California Sheephead at Ensenada´s fishmarket (Mercado Negro), Baja California, México. The California Sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher) is characterized by its wrasse-like shape, and three different color patterns for juveniles, adult males, and adult females.

Tomás Castelazo, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Aaron Burden on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Do young stars blow bubbles? The larger view shows a stellar field observed with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and the inset highlights HD 61005, a star like our Sun, only 120 light-years away. Much younger than the Sun, at just about 100 million years old, it blows a fast and dense stellar wind that pushes out the cooler dust and gas that surrounds it, forming a bubble called an astrosphere. The star-blown bubble was detected with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and it has a diameter roughly 200 times the Earth-Sun distance. Our Sun has a bubble too, called the heliosphere, which protects the planets from cosmic radiation. Also shown in the inset is debris left behind from star formation, observed by Hubble. The debris appears as wings, giving the star its nickname: the Moth.

Two Glanville fritillaries (Melitaea cinxia) on a red clover. Today is Kaede Hondo's birthday, she voiced Kokoro Yotsuba in Kamisama Minarai: Himitsu no Cocotama.

Sven Damerow, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Unknown Author. Typically presented as a proverb or a Zen Buddhist-inspired teaching;  telling us that intense emotions, like anger, distort our perception, preventing us from seeing things as they truly are and calm clarity is needed for clear understanding.

Luca Bravo on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

rlier this week, Earth’s shadow swept across the full Moon in the year’s only total lunar eclipse. This stunning sequence combines images showing the Moon’s path across the night sky. Each lunar image captures our planet’s shadow gradually engulfing the Moon, culminating in its red glow. Sunlight scatters and refracts as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere toward the Moon. Shorter wavelength light (blue and green) scatters more efficiently, leaving red, orange, and yellow hues to paint the lunar surface. Tsé Bit'a'í (”rock with wings”, also known as Shiprock), located in Navajo Nation, provides a powerful volcanic foreground central to this photo and to stories of Navajo origin, adventure, and heroism. As the first full moon of the lunar new year, this eclipse held significance across cultures. Visible from East Asia to North America, this eclipse united observers across great distances, a cosmic reminder that we share the same sky.

Photo by Satoru Murata; Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)