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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How does the sky turn dark at night? In stages, and with different characteristic colors rising from the horizon. The featured image shows, left to right, increasingly late twilight times after sunset in 20 different vertical bands. The picture was taken last month in Syracuse, Sicily, Italy, in the direction opposite the Sun. On the far left is the pre-sunset upper sky. Toward the right, prominent bands include the Belt of Venus, the Blue Band, the Horizon Band, and the Red Band. As the dark shadow of the Earth rises, the colors in these bands are caused by direct sunlight reflecting from air and aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere, multiple reflections sometimes involving a reddened sunset, and refraction. In practice, these bands can be diffuse and hard to discern, and their colors can depend on colors near the setting Sun. Finally, the Sun completely sets and the sky becomes dark. Don't despair -- the whole thing will happen in reverse when the Sun rises again in the morning.

Photo by Dario Giannobile

A Winter Feeling

About Love of Another

I don't recall what triggered the idea to write
this. I do know that I liked how it came out.
I hope you do.

The day after,
the day before,
when life changed,
for evermore.

A happy life,
not anymore,
losing my wife,
sweet Eleanor.

Now I grieve,
for evermore,
losing my love,
my Eleanor.

"Disturbances on the sun may have the potential to devastate our power grid and communication systems. When the next big storm arrives, will we be prepared for it?"  More at The New Yorker ➜ 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

It's easy to get lost following the intricate, looping, and twisting filaments of supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240, the filamentary nebula goes by the popular nickname the Spaghetti Nebula. Seen toward the boundary of the constellations of the Bull (Taurus) and the Charioteer (Auriga), the impressive gas structure covers nearly 3 degrees on the sky, equivalent to 6 full moons. That's about 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. This composite image includes data taken through narrow-band filters isolating emission from hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue) glowing gas. The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from this massive stellar explosion first reached the Earth when woolly mammoths roamed free. Besides the expanding remnant, this cosmic catastrophe left behind a pulsar: a spinning neutron star that is the remnant of the original star's core.

Photo by Stéphane Vetter (Nuits sacrées)

Missing.
Gone away.
My shadow has left me,
at least yesterday.

My shadow, likes me,
it's apparent to see,
for she follows me,
wherever I be.

It is disturbing,
especially for me,
for I am still in mourning,
please let me be.

How long,
must I live,
like this?
How much time,
does it take,
to heal a broken heart?

I'm stuck in mental mud,
or just mental decay,
as my emotions become,
cloudier each day.

I am trying to jump start,
what I write
and avoid words,
meaningless and trite.