NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

One of our Solar System's most tantalizing worlds, icy Saturnian moon Enceladus appears in these detailed hemisphere views from the Cassini spacecraft. In false color, the five panels present 13 years of infrared image data from Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer and Imaging Science Subsystem. Fresh ice is colored red, and the most dramatic features look like long gashes in the 500 kilometer diameter moon's south polar region. They correspond to the location of tiger stripes, surface fractures that likely connect to an ocean beneath the Enceladus ice shell. The fractures are the source of the moon's icy plumes that continuously spew into space. The plumes were discovered by by Cassini in 2005. Now, reddish hues in the northern half of the leading hemisphere view also indicate a recent resurfacing of other regions of the geologically active moon, a world that may hold conditions suitable for life. Experts Debate: How will humanity first discover extraterrestrial life?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Yes, but have you ever seen the space station do this? If you know when and where to look, watching the bright International Space Station (ISS) drift across your night sky is a fascinating sight -- but not very unusual. Images of the ISS crossing in front of the half-degree Moon or Sun do exist, but are somewhat rare as they take planning, timing, and patience to acquire. Catching the ISS crossing in front of minuscule Mars, though, is on another level. Using online software, the featured photographer learned that the unusual transit would be visible only momentarily along a very narrow stretch of nearby land spanning just 90 meters. Within this stretch, the equivalent ground velocity of the passing ISS image would be a quick 7.4 kilometers per second. However, with a standard camera, a small telescope, an exact location to set up his equipment, an exact direction to point the telescope, and sub-millisecond timing -- he created a video from which the featured 0.00035 second exposure was extracted. In the resulting image capture, details on both Mars and the ISS are visible simultaneously. The featured image was acquired last Monday at 05:15:47 local time from just northeast of San Diego, California, USA. Although typically much smaller, angularly, than the ISS, Mars is approaching its maximum angular size in the next few weeks, because the blue planet (Earth) is set to pass its closest to the red planet (Mars) in their respective orbits around the Sun. Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Tom Glenn

Please Mr. Trump,
take your ball.
Just go away.
No more lies
are to be told
about your opponent
or how he is old.
You're no youngster now,
just a spoiled child,
with a brain so dim,
you might think
it's you, not him.
Your ego should not burst
as you are not good,
for you're the worst.

Are you here? Are you awake.
How many questions will it take
before the realization, of what she said
will lodge into the empty head.
Empty of our life and friends.
I cannot thank God. I can't pretend,
not liking what life has done to she
and where in this life, she will still be.

Can you avail a whale,
who's wailing at Sea?
Another stupid question,
as I now see,
the difference in words
of the wailing whale, formerly.

He'll come for me,
in the still of the night.
I'll go quite easily
and I will not fight,
for when the Night Rider,
calls out my name,
I will quickly answer,
while here you'll remain.
When the Night Rider
knocks on our door,
I will answer the knock
and be here no more.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Does the Sun set in the same direction every day? No, the direction of sunset depends on the time of the year. Although the Sun always sets approximately toward the west, on an equinox like today the Sun sets directly toward the west. After today's September equinox, the Sun will set increasingly toward the southwest, reaching its maximum displacement at the December solstice. Before today's September equinox, the Sun had set toward the northwest, reaching its maximum displacement at the June solstice. The featured time-lapse image shows seven bands of the Sun setting one day each month from 2019 December through 2020 June. These image sequences were taken from Alberta, Canada -- well north of the Earth's equator -- and feature the city of Edmonton in the foreground. The middle band shows the Sun setting during the last equinox -- in March. From this location, the Sun will set along this same equinox band again today.

Photo by Luca Vanzella

As I sit, with pen in hand,
I must say, with no remand,
of writing two works, recently
as I sat in front of the
computer, writing quite freely.
Why do words, which I love
come easily from my trove
of words bouncing in my head?
Where is the senseless prose,
now taking me? I wish to know.
Let me be, o fate of mine,
I love all my friends, for sure
and hope my distant love
will last long and endure.

She walks with the grace
of a nubile dear.
A walk she has practiced
for many a year.
It is so easy for you,
to see her now.
Her movements are smooth.
I can only sigh and bow.

All elections are important. Make your vote count

When she says to me,
"Here, I don't belong.
please, it is time,
to go to the Home."
My words to her,
do resound,
as I want her
near and around,
so I can care for her,
as long as I can.
My troth is to you,
but you don't understand.

Tell me now. Say it once more.
There is no truth, yet we deplore,
The lies coming from this one man.
This countries big, loud Charlatan.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Capturing this sunrise required both luck and timing. First and foremost, precise timing was needed to capture a sailboat crossing right in front of a rising Sun. Additionally, by a lucky coincidence, the background Sun itself appears unusual -- it looks like the Greek letter Omega (Ω). In reality, the Sun remained its circular self -- the Omega illusion was created by sunlight refracting through warm air just above the water. Optically, the feet of the capital Omega are actually an inverted image of the Sun region just above it. Although somewhat rare, optical effects caused by the Earth's atmosphere can make distant objects near the horizon -- including the Sun and Moon -- look quite unusual. This single exposure image was taken over the Mediterranean Sea just over two weeks ago near Valencia, Spain.

Photo by Juan Antonio Sendra

A swirling wind,
as Dust Devils climb,
spinning the dirt
into small spirals.
A gust, a burst
on a breezy day
will clear the air,
or so they say,
as I watch
leaves blow away.

Awakening, I hear the rain,
Rattling against the window pane.
The air has freshened, once again,
No more smoke, is the refrain.

Be the courage. Be the man.
Do the things, I know you can.
Keep the bully boy at bay.
Deflate his ego. It's the way
to see him quiver in the dust,
as his oiled machinery turns to rust.

Take his lies to a fault,
dousing them with grains of salt.
Enough salt and words spring free
as lies interest his faithful core,
until the truth prevails, once more.

The words are many.
The thoughts untrue,
As the pompous one
Tries to confuse you.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) - Wrote an essay when she was 13 years old which was published in her synagogue bulletin urging congregants to rid themselves of hate and prejudice. The essay, dated June 2, 1946 and titled "One People" was published in Ginsburg’s 2017 book “My Own Words”, which contains a collection of her speeches and writings as well as her thoughts on growing up in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood.

One People

The war has left a bloody trail and many deep wounds not too easily healed. Many people have been left with scars that take a long time to pass away. We must never forget the horrors which our brethren were subjected to in Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps. Then, too, we must try hard to understand that for righteous people hate and prejudice are neither good occupations nor fit companions. "Rabbi Alfred Bettleheim once said: 'Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking'.” In our beloved land families were not scattered, communities not erased nor our nation destroyed by the ravages of the World War.

Yet, dare we be at ease? We are part of a world whose unity has been almost completely shattered. No one can feel free from danger and destruction until the many torn threads of civilization are bound together again. We cannot feel safer until every nation, regardless of weapons or power, will meet together in good faith, the people worthy of mutual association. 

There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance. Then and only then shall we have a world built on the foundation of the Fatherhood of God and whose structure is the Brotherhood of Man.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

In the distant universe, time appears to run slowly. Since time-dilated light appears shifted toward the red end of the spectrum (redshifted), astronomers are able to use cosmological time-slowing to help measure vast distances in the universe. Featured, the light from distant galaxies has been broken up into its constituent colors (spectra), allowing astronomers to measure the cosmological redshift of known spectral lines. The novelty of the featured image is that the distance to hundreds of galaxies can be measured from a single frame, in this case one taken by the Visible MultiObject Spectrograph (VIMOS) operating at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) array in Chile. Analyzing the space distribution of distant objects will allow insight into when and how stars and galaxies formed, clustered, and evolved in the early universe.