NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Where do comet tails come from? There are no obvious places on the nuclei of comets from which the jets that create comet tails emanate. One of the best images of emerging jets is shown in the featured picture, taken in 2015 by ESA's robotic Rosetta spacecraft that orbited Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (Comet CG) from 2014 to 2016. The picture shows plumes of gas and dust escaping numerous places from Comet CG's nucleus as it neared the Sun and heated up. The comet has two prominent lobes, the larger one spanning about 4 kilometers, and a smaller 2.5-kilometer lobe connected by a narrow neck. Analyses indicate that evaporation must be taking place well inside the comet's surface to create the jets of dust and ice that we see emitted through the surface. Comet CG (also known as Comet 67P) loses in jets about a meter of radius during each of its 6.44-year orbits around the Sun, a rate at which will completely destroy the comet in only thousands of years. In 2016, Rosetta's mission ended with a controlled impact onto Comet CG's surface. Outreach Astronomers: Future APOD writers sought.

Where goes the man
with sand in his shoes?
He's making his decision.
What will he choose?

A lurch in a church.
A significant smile.
Those beautiful eyes
you use to beguile.
What words are these,
flowing from my mind?
Neither helpful or hurtful,
perhaps even not unkind.
"I like you not", to me she said,
but I'd like you much more,
if you'd change your head
of hair, that you currently wear,
when out and about,
but I'd still love you,
of that there's no doubt.
Sit by my side, she did say.
Stay close to me, please
and don't go away.

Click to read Maria Popova's article about  Thoreau and the Language of Trees on Brain Pickings 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sometimes, even rovers on Mars stop to admire the scenery. Just late last November the Curiosity rover on Mars paused to photograph its impressive surroundings. One thing to admire, straight ahead, was Central Butte, an unusual flat hill studied by Curiosity just a few days before this image was taken. To its right was distant Mount Sharp, the five-kilometer central peak of entire Gale crater, the interior of which Curiosity is exploring. Mount Sharp, covered in sulfates, appears quite bright in this colorized, red-filtered image. To the far left, shrouded in a very dark shadow, was the south slope of Vera Rubin ridge, an elevation explored previously by Curiosity. Between the ridge and butte were tracks left by Curiosity's wheels as they rolled forward, out of the scene. In the image foreground is, of course, humanity's current eyes on Mars: the complex robotic rover Curiosity itself. Later this year, if all goes well, NASA will have another rover -- and more eyes -- on Mars. Today you can help determine the name of this rover yourself, but tomorrow is the last day to cast your vote. Help Name the Mars 2020 Rover: Vote here!

I love this life,
I really do,
especially when
I'm living with you.

Here I go again,
down this old path.
Should I be serious
Or just have a laugh?

Words that begin flowing
towards paper, with pen in hand.
Are words left unspoken,
just heard in my head.
I write these thoughts, unthinking.
Free of the fear of failing,
when I send these words to thee.
Where am I now? What's next to do,
but to shelter and protect, my only you.
Where ever I go, what ever happens,
when I am around you,
it is so good for me,
I hope it is for you too.
For you are the one I love, every day.
I hope that this feeling never goes away.

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879, - April 18, 1955) - Source: Walter Isaacson presented this less precise translation of Einstein’s remark in the epigraph of his biography. (Credit Quote Investigator website)

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond is UGC 2885, a giant spiral galaxy about 232 million light-years distant. Some 800,000 light-years across compared to the Milky Way's diameter of 100,000 light-years or so, it has around 1 trillion stars. That's about 10 times as many stars as the Milky Way. Part of a current investigation to understand how galaxies can grow to such enormous sizes, UGC 2885 was also part of astronomer Vera Rubin's pioneering study of the rotation of spiral galaxies. Her work was the first to convincingly demonstrate the dominating presence of dark matter in our universe.

My ears are ringing.
It's ringing; not a buzz,
while my head feels
like it is covered in fuzz.
Perhaps it's my body,
giving me a hint,
that my old grey matter
is full of old lint.
It's surprising to me
as my mind does recoil
and what I see in the news
makes my blood boil.
The ignorance that is seen,
in this great land,
is in both parties as they
await the command.
Get out to vote.
Vote where you can.
Vote for your choice,
Woman or man.

She said to me,
"if I tell you to go,
would you just leave?
When you look at me,
I see the sadness, you feel
and know you'll be
better when I'm gone."
I said "Stop don't talk like that
for I am here for you,
no matter what you might do.
Please don't worry about me;
we will manage this, please agree."
She looked and nodded at me.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

On January 21, 2019 moonwatchers on planet Earth saw a total lunar eclipse. In 35 frames this composite image follows the Moon that night as it crossed into Earth's dark umbral shadow. Taken 3 minutes apart, they almost melt together in a continuous screen that captures the dark colors within the shadow itself and the northern curve of the shadow's edge. Sunlight scattered by the atmosphere into the shadow causes the lunar surface to appear reddened during totality (left), but close to the umbra's edge, the limb of the eclipsed Moon shows a remarkable blue hue. The blue eclipsed moonlight originates as rays of sunlight pass through layers high in Earth's upper stratosphere, colored by ozone that scatters red light and transmits blue. The Moon's next crossing into Earth's umbral shadow, will be on May 26, 2021.

Photo by Laszlo Francsics

Click the image below to read Tim Jone's article 

https://benjhicks.com/

The wind in the valley
is blowing quite hard.
Blowing all of the debris
out of our yard.
That's not all bad,
if you know what I mean,
except the neighbors debris
is now my yards scene.

My hat was on
and then I said,
I feel the rain
on the back of my head.
Is your hat waterproof?
they asked of I.
It must not be
for my head isn't dry.

Deep in the forest,
where you'd never go,
there dwells a creature,
you may not know.
A creature quite short
or stocky to see.
A grumpy one certainly,
it reminded me of me.
His name is Badger,
He roots through the soil,
looking for some food
before it does spoil.

She came up to me.
her eyes filled with dread.
She had been sleeping,
The sleep of the dead.

A sleep so deep;
no thoughts, no dreams,
no tossing or turning,
not what it seems.
For centuries it's happened,
that is well known,
the deepest of sleep,
when tired to the bone.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Some 13,000 light-years away toward the southern constellation Pavo, the globular star cluster NGC 6752 roams the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Over 10 billion years old, NGC 6752 follows clusters Omega Centauri and 47 Tucanae as the third brightest globular in planet Earth's night sky. It holds over 100 thousand stars in a sphere about 100 light-years in diameter. Telescopic explorations of the NGC 6752 have found that a remarkable fraction of the stars near the cluster's core, are multiple star systems. They also reveal the presence of blue straggle stars, stars which appear to be too young and massive to exist in a cluster whose stars are all expected to be at least twice as old as the Sun. The blue stragglers are thought to be formed by star mergers and collisions in the dense stellar environment at the cluster's core. This sharp color composite also features the cluster's ancient red giant stars in yellowish hues. (Note: The bright, spiky blue star at 11 o'clock from the cluster center is a foreground star along the line-of-sight to NGC 6752)

Photo by Jose Joaquin Perez