Public Posts

I would rise before the Dawn, to jog,
in an attempt to improve my health

Willow trees are fluttering,
Spring winds fly
across green meadows,
under a dappled sky.

Clouds, massive pillows,
slowly passing by,
comforting, this old son.
Another life to try.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Rising opposite the setting Sun, June's Full Moon occurred within about 28 hours of the solstice. The Moon stays close to the Sun's path along the ecliptic plane and so while the solstice Sun climbed high in daytime skies, June's Full Moon remained low that night as seen from northern latitudes. In fact, the Full Moon hugs the horizon in this June 21 rooftop night sky view from Bursa, Turkey, constructed from exposures made every 10 minutes between moonrise and moonset. In 2024 the Moon also reached a major lunar standstill, an extreme in the monthly north-south range of moonrise and moonset caused by the precession of the Moon's orbit over an 18.6 year cycle. As a result, this June solstice Full Moon was at its southernmost moonrise and moonset along the horizon.

Photo by Tunc Tezel

Spring eases
into Summer,
with colder weather.
What a bummer.

A car lover,
I still am.
From my youth,
to now when it will end.

I'm going to
stop driving a car.
Won't like it, but
that is the bar.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Not a paradox, Comet 13P/Olbers is returning to the inner Solar System after 68 years. The periodic, Halley-type comet will reach its next perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on June 30 and has become a target for binocular viewing low in planet Earth's northern hemisphere night skies. But this sharp telescopic image of 13P is composed of stacked exposures made on the night of June 25. It easily reveals shifting details in the bright comet's torn and tattered ion tail buffeted by the wind from an active Sun, along with a broad, fanned-out dust tail and slightly greenish coma. The frame spans over two degrees across a background of faint stars toward the constellation Lynx.

Photo by Dan Bartlett

Not a choice,
I would relish,
for the dissolving
love of friends.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Jets of material blasting from newborn stars, are captured in this James Webb Space Telescope close-up of the Serpens Nebula. The powerful protostellar outflows are bipolar, twin jets spewing in opposite directions. Their directions are perpendicular to accretion disks formed around the spinning, collapsing stellar infants. In the NIRcam image, the reddish color represents emission from molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide produced as the jets collide with the surrounding gas and dust. The sharp image shows for the first time that individual outflows detected in the Serpens Nebula are generally aligned along the same direction. That result was expected, but has only now come into clear view with Webb's detailed exploration of the active young star-forming region. Brighter foreground stars exhibit Webb's characteristic diffraction spikes. At the Serpens Nebula's estimated distance of 1,300 light-years, this cosmic close-up frame is about 1 light-year across.

It is widely believed today that the Earth's moon is the result of a giant impact between Earth, then in its early proto-planet stage, and an astronomical body called Theia. The debris from this impact, collected in an orbit around Earth to form the Moon. Analysis of samples brought back from the NASA Apollo missions suggest support for this theory, which is called the Giant-impact theory.
Most moons in our solar system are believed not to have formed this way but from gravitational capture by the planets during the formation of our solar system. Read More at the UK National History Museum.