Contributor Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-years. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye. But at a distance of 7,500 light-years it lies some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star above the central dark notch in this field and left of the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324).

Photo by Demison Lopes

An old writing from January 19, 2018,
in a different style but stirll true today.

Written prior to my wife being
admitted to a Memory Care facility,
approximately a year after she was
diagnosed with Early Onset Dementia.

When you are alone, many thoughts
of loneliness will enter your mind.
Talk about it with your friends and family.

The mind wanders.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 1232 face-on. Nearly 200,000 light-years across, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located some 47 million light-years away in the flowing southern constellation of Eridanus. This sharp, multi-color, telescopic image of NGC 1232 includes remarkable details of the distant island universe. From the core outward, the galaxy's colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the grand, sweeping spiral arms. NGC 1232's apparent, small, barred-spiral companion galaxy is cataloged as NGC 1232A. Distance estimates place it much farther though, around 300 million light-years away, and unlikely to be interacting with NGC 1232. Of course, the prominent bright star with the spiky appearance is much closer than NGC 1232 and lies well within our own Milky Way.

Photo by Neil Corke

Moderation
is the answer,
to the results of
the excesses in
our short life.

Be good to others,
"The good book reads."
yet here we are, engaged in war.

Creatures short,
Creatures tall.
When I was young,
I knew them all.

Round ones,
Square ones, all,
Were the same height,
large or small.

"Makes no sense,"
you said to me.
"To be the same height,
simply can't be."

I said, "You're right,
for the size you see,
looks exactly,
the same to me."

What day
will it end.
When you go
from Love,
to just being,
a friend?
How will I know?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Not one, but two comets appeared near the Sun during last week's total solar eclipse. The expected comet was Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, but it was disappointingly dimmer than many had hoped. However, relatively unknown Comet SOHO-5008 also appeared in long duration camera exposures. This comet was the 5008th comet identified on images taken by ESA & NASA's Sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft. Likely much smaller, Comet SOHO-5008 was a sungrazer which disintegrated within hours as it passed too near the Sun. The featured image is not only unusual for capturing two comets during an eclipse, but one of the rare times that a sungrazing comet has been photographed from the Earth's surface. Also visible in the image is the sprawling corona of our Sun and the planets Mercury (left) and Venus (right). Of these planets and comets, only Venus was easily visible to millions of people in the dark shadow of the Moon that crossed North America on April 8. Solar Eclipse Imagery: Notable Submissions to APOD

Photo by Lin Zixuan (Tsinghua U.)

One more moment,
is all I ask,
to be with you again.
One moment is the past.