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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

ght billion people are about to disappear in this snapshot from space taken on 2022 November 21. On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft. Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver was used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the spacecraft orbited in the opposite direction of the Moon's orbit around planet Earth. Swinging around the Moon, Orion reached a maximum distance (just over 400,000 kilometers) from Earth on 2022 November 28, exceeding a record set by Apollo 13 for most distant spacecraft designed for human space exploration. The Artemis II mission, carrying 4 astronauts around the moon and back again, is due to launch as early as February 6.

The entrance of the locomotive Hrvatske Željeznice class 2044 with a local train to Zagreb between Turčin and Sveti Ilija, Croatia. July 2009.

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is about 1,800 light-years distant. It lies just south of Orion in planet Earth's skies toward the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Posing with scattered Milky Way stars, its generally simple spherical shape about 8 light-years in diameter is revealed in this deep telescopic image. The beautiful and complex shapes seen within the cosmic cloud are visually enhanced by the use of long exposures and narrowband filters that capture emission from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Otherwise Abell 7 would be much too faint to be appreciated by eye. A planetary nebula represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience 5 billion years hence, as the nebula's central, once sun-like star shrugs off its outer layers. Abell 7 itself is estimated to be 20,000 years old. But its central star, seen here as a fading white dwarf, is some 10 billion years old.

Photo by Martin Pugh

".....The study shows that when meaning is forced through such pipelines repeatedly, diversity collapses not because of bad intentions, malicious design or corporate negligence, but because only certain kinds of meaning survive the text-to-image-to-text repeated conversions".  More at The Conversation ➜

Northwest view of Yugar village and fields, viewed from Phuktal Gompa. Elevation 3,850 m (12,630 ft)), on the left bank of the Tsarap River (elev. 3,820 m (12,530 ft)). In this arid terrain above the tree line, villagers rely on water from the snow-fed Phu Nala (flowing from centre to bottom) for their fields. Zanskar, Ladakh, India.

Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Attributed to Marcus Aurelius (121 AD - 180 AD) Roman Emperor 

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Ocean crashing on beach