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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

On January 18, 2024, during its 72nd flight in the thin Martian atmosphere, autonomous Mars Helicopter Ingenuity rose to an altitude of 12 meters (40 feet) and hovered for 4.5 seconds above the Red Planet. Ingenuity's 72nd landing was a rough one though. During descent it lost contact with the Perseverance rover about 1 meter above the Martian surface. Ingenuity was able to transmit this image after contact was re-established, showing the shadow of one of its rotor blades likely damaged during landing. And so, after wildly exceeding expectations during over 1,000 days of exploring Mars, the history-making Ingenuity has ended its flight operations. Nicknamed Ginny, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity became the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021. Before launch, a small piece of material from the lower-left wing of the Wright Brothers Flyer 1, the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on planet Earth, was fixed to the underside of Ingenuity's solar panel.

Off to the market,
to buy a new horse.
What are you doing?
Buying a horse, of course.

What kind of horse,
are you wishing to buy?
I don't know but I
do want to try.

Do you want a gelding,
or a young mare?
I am unsure of the need,
is this "Buyer Beware?"

Of course, it is,
young master, mine.
why else would you ask,
for intervention divine?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Not all roses are red of course, but they can still be very pretty. Likewise, the beautiful Rosette Nebula and other star forming regions are often shown in astronomical images with a predominately red hue, in part because the dominant emission in the nebula is from hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen's strongest optical emission line, known as H-alpha, is in the red region of the spectrum. But the beauty of an emission nebula need not be appreciated in red light alone. Other atoms in the nebula are also excited by energetic starlight and produce narrow emission lines as well. In this close-up view of the Rosette Nebula, narrowband images are mapped into broadband colors to show emission from Sulfur atoms in red, Hydrogen in green, and Oxygen in blue. In fact, the scheme of mapping these narrow atomic emission lines (SHO) into the broader colors (RGB) is adopted in many Hubble images of emission nebulae. This image spans about 50 light-years across the center of the Rosette Nebula. The nebula lies some 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros.

Photo by Tommy Lease

I was sitting at the end of the bar, in a seedy tavern,
drinking a long neck, Budweiser. A bottle shape which
in my mind encourages sipping. The name of the tavern
escapes me but it was formerly, The Looking Glass, located
on 45th Ave, west of the UW campus, across I 5.
My father once owned this with his partner and I would come
here on Sunday mornings, after church. He cleaned the place,
while I sat at the bar, eating a pickled Polish Sausage and drinking
a Coke. A treat for me, at the time.
This was after WWII and the placed was usually full of discharged
servicemen who enjoyed the partying. But I digress.

As I was sitting on the stool, contemplating what my life might be,
as I soothed my physce while sucking on my bottle of Bud. A recent
event in my life had me sitting in sorrow. A tragic event which I needed
to deal with. There was music playing, when I noticed a younger lady sitting
next to me. She said, "Would you like to dance? I glanced at her, saw a lovely
face with a beautiful smile. I replied to her, "I haven't danced any many years
or a long while." I looked at her, seeing a small tear, in the corner of her eye.
She said, "I'm lonely. I lost my best friend and husband recently and the reality
is I'm trying to breakaway from this sadness I am mired in."

I realized, at that moment, I was also looking to escape from my sadness but still
trying to maintain our memories my late wife and I had shared. We talked for a while,
and agreed we would become friends and see each other, in the near future, as we moved
from this sad state of affairs. It dawned on me at that moment, that the World we live in,
has much sadness. Most of the sadness of others we were not aware of.
(to be continued)

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