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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens. Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the cosmic head-covering is more like an interstellar bubble, blown with a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. NGC 2359 is located about 15,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Great Overdog. This remarkably sharp image is a mixed cocktail of data from narrowband filters, capturing not only natural looking stars but details of the nebula's filamentary structures. The star in the center of Thor's Helmet is expected to explode in a spectacular supernova sometime within the next few thousand years.

Photo by Ritesh Biswas

"The strategy behind the “No-Blame” approach is counterintuitive but effective: enlisting the bullies’ help to solve the problem." More at Reasons to be Cheerful ➜

You make me happy,
in your casual way.
I know not what to do,
when writing far away.

You make my day,
with your warm, good morn,
and I relish the time,
when I am reborn.

Reborn, once again,
with a future to see.
Not about a romance
for that's a fantasy.

I walked the trail,
through darkened wood,
lost in thoughts of
where life stood.

My love is gone,
with great regret.
I loved her since
the day we met.

Green were the boughs,
hung from the tree.
Sad were my eyes,
searching for thee.

Breaking my heart,
within my chest.
Please let me sleep,
for I need more rest.

Light of morning,
Light so bright,
Light is coming,
Holding back the night.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Venus goes through phases. Just like our Moon, Venus can appear as a full circular disk, a thin crescent, or anything in between. Venus, frequently the brightest object in the post-sunset or pre-sunrise sky, appears so small, however, that it usually requires binoculars or a small telescope to clearly see its current phase. The featured time-lapse sequence was taken over the course of six months in 2015 from Surgères, Charente-Maritime, France, and shows not only how Venus changes phase, but changes angular size as well. When Venus is on the far side of the Sun from the Earth, it appears angularly smallest and nearest to full phase, while when Venus and Earth are on the same side of the Sun, Venus appears larger, but as a crescent. This month Venus rises before dawn in waxing gibbous phases. Free APOD Lecture: January 9, 2024 to the Amateur Astronomers of Association of New York

www.gary-randall.com

Nelle Harper Lee (1926 – 2016) was an American author who is best known for her classic novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird", published in 1960. The book quickly became a best-seller and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains one of the most widely read and beloved novels of the 20th century, Despite the success of "To Kill a Mockingbird", Lee lived a relatively private life and shied away from the public eye. More

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

To some it looks like a cat's eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch shell. It is actually one of the brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the outer circular concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. The formation of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures, however, is not well understood. The featured image is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image with X-ray light captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The exquisite floating space statue spans over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye, humanity may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years. Free APOD Lecture: January 9, 2024 to the Amateur Astronomers of Association of New York