NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo and appears as only a faint, extended object in small telescopes. We see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our line of sight in this remarkably detailed galaxy portrait, a telescopic view that spans an area about the angular size of a full moon. In it, the giant galaxy's elongated yellowish core is dominated by the light from old, cool stars. Beyond the core, grand spiral arms are filled with young blue star clusters and speckled with pinkish star forming regions. An extended arm sweeps past a smaller satellite galaxy (NGC 6744A) at the lower right. NGC 6744's galactic companion is reminiscent of the Milky Way's satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Photo by Zhuokai Liu

Always interesting when entering
the house and forgetting
to turn off the alarm.
As the alarm was squawking at me,
I was yelling at the alarm.
Probably something like who
the heck are your parents, et al.
The alarm stopped it's siren noise,
after I entered the pass code,
and received a call from a lovely
person at the Alarm Company, that
wanted to know if we were OK.
After I explained my memory lapse,
she asked for my password, which I supplied.
A very polite, Customer Service Representative
who was patient and understanding of
this old, forgetful person.

The wand like scepter
in his hand
was made for him
and by his command.
A simple thrust,
a break of wrist
and your thoughts,
tremble and twist.
Who are you?
was often said.
His response was,
"I am Death,
you are dead."

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

It may appear, at first, like the Galaxy is producing the lightning, but really it's the Earth. The featured nighttime landscape was taken from a southern tip of the Italian Island of Sardinia in early June. The foreground rocks and shrubs are near the famous Capo Spartivento Lighthouse, and the camera is pointed south toward Algeria in Africa. In the distance, across the Mediterranean Sea, a thunderstorm is threatening, with several electric lightning strokes caught together during this 25-second wide-angle exposure. Much farther in the distance, strewn about the sky, are hundreds of stars in the neighborhood of our Sun in the Milky Way Galaxy. Farthest away, and slanting down from the upper left, are billions of stars that together compose the central band of our Milky Way. Free Lecture: APOD editor to speak in NYC on January 3

Photo by Ivan Pedretti

I remember the first time
I was at your door.
My heart beat was racing,
As I wanted more.
More love from the one
That fate had given me.
One to spend my whole life
Is what would be.

At 1:30 AM on November 20th, I stood in a puddle, not quite sure if I’d peed myself or my water broke. The nurse on Overlake Hospital’s Labor & Delivery line had me lean forward a cough. The puddle grew bigger. It was go-time.

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The time spent in this place
has not been divine,
but has been one of love
that our spirits entwine.
A place of love and hate
with friends, yours and mine
are but a lost memory now
best viewed with a glass of wine.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The first hint of our Sun's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets. The 27th object on Messier's list, now known as M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula, the type of nebula our Sun will produce when nuclear fusion stops in its core. M27 is one of the brightest planetary nebulae on the sky, and can be seen toward the constellation of the Fox (Vulpecula) with binoculars. It takes light about 1000 years to reach us from M27, featured here in colors emitted by hydrogen and oxygen. Understanding the physics and significance of M27 was well beyond 18th century science. Even today, many things remain mysterious about bipolar planetary nebula like M27, including the physical mechanism that expels a low-mass star's gaseous outer-envelope, leaving an X-ray hot white dwarf. APOD across world languages: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Beijing), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Farsi, French, French, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish and Ukrainian

Photo by Steve Mazlin

A fair wind blows in
from the sea.
The smell of life's death,
comes wafting to me.
What is the connection,
when there is an urge,
to return to the water,
to hear the waves surge?
An urge with much eland
to come back to the place
where life began.

My thoughts of my friends
and great co-workers, like you
that spurs me along,
for if you only knew,
the love that has carried me through
was the love from many not just a few.