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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What color is the Moon? It depends on the night. Outside of the Earth's atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray. Viewed from inside the Earth's atmosphere, though, the moon can appear quite different. The featured image highlights a collection of apparent colors of the full moon documented by one astrophotographer over 10 years from different locations across Italy. A red or yellow colored moon usually indicates a moon seen near the horizon. There, some of the blue light has been scattered away by a long path through the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes laden with fine dust. A blue-colored moon is more rare and can indicate a moon seen through an atmosphere carrying larger dust particles. What created the purple moon is unclear -- it may be a combination of several effects. The last image captures the total lunar eclipse of 2018 July -- where the moon, in Earth's shadow, appeared a faint red -- due to light refracted through air around the Earth. Today there is not only another full moon but a total lunar eclipse visible to observers in North and South America -- an occurrence that may lead to some unexpected lunar colorings.

Photo by Marcella Giulia Pace

Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947) French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. He painted landscapes, urban scenes, portraits and intimate domestic scenes, where the backgrounds, colors and painting style usually took precedence over the subject. His early work was strongly influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin, as well as the prints of Hokusai and other Japanese artists.  Bonnard was a leading figure in the transition from Impressionism to Modernism. Read more

The worries in my mind
of things yet to come,
bother me today, every time
are now ad infinitum.

The rabbit runs or does it bounce,
as it comes across the street,
searching, ever searching,
looking for my plant's to eat.
Please eat the grass, there is plenty
and leave my plants alone,
especially the Tulips, over there.
You are a pretty creature, I can see,
are you a rabbit or a European Hare?
I know not what you are,
but I do know and now will care,
you have a companion now.
I worry about my flowers, in despair.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

An almost full moon on April 15 brought these luminous apparitions to a northern spring night over Alberta Canada. On that night, bright moonlight refracted and reflected by hexagonal ice crystals in high clouds created a complex of halos and arcs more commonly seen by sunlight in daytime skies. While the colors of the arcs and moondogs or paraselenae were just visible to the unaided eye, a blend of exposures ranging from 30 seconds to 1/20 second was used to render this moonlit wide-angle skyscape. The Big Dipper at the top of the frame sits just above a smiling and rainbow-hued circumzenithal arc. With Arcturus left and Regulus toward the right the Moon is centered in its often spotted 22 degree halo. May 15 will also see the bright light of a Full Moon shining in Earth's night skies. Tomorrow's Full Moon will be dimmed for a while though, as it slides through Earth's shadow in a total lunar eclipse. Watch: May 15-16 Total Lunar Eclipse

Photo by Alan Dyer

You may recall me writing about the
ugliness of Dementia my wife has had for the last six years.
I will move into a Memory Care Facility
with my wife, on May 18th. I will be in
Independent Living but will reside with my
wife of 60 plus years.
My writing content may vary as I become involved, on a daily basis. Please bear with
me as I try to produce more humorous, entertaining pieces.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

There's a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Stars are observed to orbit a very massive and compact object there known as Sgr A* (say "sadge-ay-star"). But this just released radio image (inset) from planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope is the first direct evidence of the Milky Way's central black hole. As predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the four million solar mass black hole's strong gravity is bending light and creating a shadow-like dark central region surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. Supporting observations made by space-based telescopes and ground-based observatories provide a wider view of the galactic center's dynamic environment and an important context for the Event Horizon Telescope's black hole image. The main panel image shows the X-ray data from Chandra and infrared data from Hubble. While the main panel is about 7-light years across, the Event Horizon Telescope inset image itself spans a mere 10 light-minutes at the center of our galaxy, some 27,000 light-years away.

https://vladimirkostka.com/

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The massive stars of NGC 346 are short lived, but very energetic. The star cluster is embedded in the largest star forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud, some 210,000 light-years distant. Their winds and radiation sweep out an interstellar cavern in the gas and dust cloud about 200 light-years across, triggering star formation and sculpting the region's dense inner edge. Cataloged as N66, the star forming region also appears to contain a large population of infant stars. A mere 3 to 5 million years old and not yet burning hydrogen in their cores, the infant stars are strewn about the embedded star cluster. In this false-color Hubble Space Telescope image, visible and near-infrared light are seen as blue and green, while light from atomic hydrogen emission is red.

These delicate one-bite pork wontons served in a soothing chicken broth will warm you through on a chilly day. Click to read the recipe

The Sun came out,
there was no rain.
At last some warmth,
to mar the pain,
of dragging the hose
and watering again.
.