Magazine Posts

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In fact, dwarf galaxy IC 2574 shows clear evidence of intense star forming activity in its telltale reddish regions of glowing hydrogen gas. Just as in spiral galaxies, the turbulent star-forming regions in IC 2574 are churned by stellar winds and supernova explosions spewing material into the galaxy's interstellar medium and triggering further star formation. A mere 12 million light-years distant, IC 2574 is part of the M81 group of galaxies, seen toward the northern constellation Ursa Major. Also known as Coddington's Nebula, the faint but intriguing island universe is about 50,000 light-years across, discovered by American astronomer Edwin Coddington in 1898.

Photo by Dane Vetter

Plains zebras (Equus quagga) in Maputo National Park, Mozambique.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

                   Sonnet

Oh for a poet—for a beacon bright
To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray; 
To spirit back the Muses, long astray,
And flush Parnassus with a newer light;
To put these little sonnet-men to flight
Who fashion, in a shrewd mechanic way, 
Songs without souls, that flicker for a day, 
To vanish in irrevocable night,

What does it mean, this barren age of ours? 
Here are the men, the women, and the flowers, 
The seasons, and the sunset, as before.
What does it mean? Shall there not one arise 
To wrench one banner from the western skies, 
And mark it with his name forevermore?

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935) was an American poet born in Maine. Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on three occasions and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
This poem is in the public domain.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Cradled in red-glowing hydrogen gas, stars are being born in Orion. These stellar nurseries lie at the edge of the giant Orion molecular cloud complex, some 1,500 light-years away. This detailed view spans about 12 degrees across the center of the well-known constellation, with the Great Orion Nebula, the closest large star-forming region, visible toward the lower right. The deep mosaic also includes, near the top center, the Flame Nebula and the Horsehead Nebula. Image data acquired with a hydrogen-alpha filter adds other remarkable features to this wide-angle cosmic vista: pervasive tendrils of energized atomic hydrogen gas and portions of the surrounding Barnard's Loop. While the Orion Nebula and many stars in Orion are easy to see with the unaided eye, emission from the extensive interstellar gas is faint and much harder to record, even in telescopic views of the nebula-rich complex. Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (after 1995)

Photo by Piotr Czerski

Austrian nordic combined skier Manuel Einkemmer.

Granada, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Some comets are regular guests of our solar neighborhood; others come by only once, never to return. We won’t have another chance to see Comet C/2024 E1 (Wierzchoś), which is currently making its way through the inner Solar System. The hyperbolic orbit of this comet indicates that it will likely become an interstellar traveler. Comet Wierzchoś is today near its closest approach to the Earth, passing roughly the same distance from the Earth as is the Sun. The featured 30-minute exposure was taken last week in Chile and shows a 5-degree long ion tail as well as three shorter dust tails. The green hue of the coma comes from the breakdown of dicarbon molecules by sunlight, but that process does not last long enough to also tinge the tails. On the far right lies a spiral galaxy far in the distance: NGC 300.

Photo by José J. Chambó; Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)