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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's happening to this cloud? Ice crystals in a distant cirrus cloud are acting like little floating prisms. Known informally as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc appears parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds present below -- in this case cirrus fibrates. The numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are somewhat unusual to see. The featured fire rainbow was photographed earlier this month near North Fork Mountain in West Virginia, USA.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) - Born Thomas Pain; was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a dangerous asteroid striking the Earth during any given year is low. Because some past mass extinction events have been linked to asteroid impacts, however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog those asteroids that may one day affect life on Earth. Pictured here are the orbits of the over 1,000 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). These documented tumbling boulders of rock and ice are over 140 meters across and will pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth -- about 20 times the distance to the Moon. Although none of them will strike the Earth in the next 100 years -- not all PHAs have been discovered, and past 100 years, many orbits become hard to predict. Were an asteroid of this size to impact the Earth, it could raise dangerous tsunamis, for example. To investigate Earth-saving strategies, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is planned for launch later this year. Of course rocks and ice bits of much smaller size strike the Earth every day, usually pose no danger, and sometimes creating memorable fireball and meteor displays.

When the Sun falls
on the end of your day.
When the lessons, you learned
have failed and gone away,
will it be the time to lose your toys
and prepare your life, once more,
as the life you live,
is not here to stay.

It was long ago,
when a boy and his dog,
would, "Hit the road"
and walk the trails,
with fishing pole in hand.
Life was so grand,
when mile after mile,
passed by. Walking from
Riverton Heights to
Maple Valley. It was
a trek, for a Boy Scout,
newbie to make.

As I sit and stare
at the empty chair,
waiting for you to show,
I am remembering when
you were my only friend,
and I was your beau.
So many years now gone,
I thought I would try
to rekindle the warming flame.

The light creeps out,
across the wood floor,
stays away from the window,
stays off of the floor.
Leave the door open,
await the first guest,
for tomorrows the Sabbath,
it's then you may rest.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Taken on mission sol 180 (August 22) this sharp image from a Hazard Camera on the Perseverance rover looks out across a rock strewn floor of Jezero crater on Mars. At 52.5 centimeters (21 inches) in diameter, one of the rover's steerable front wheels is at lower left in the frame. Near center is a large rock nicknamed Rochette. Mission planners don't want to avoid Rochette though. Instead Perseverance will be instructed to reach out with its 2 meter long robotic arm and abrade the rock's surface, to determine whether it has a consistency suitable for obtaining a sample, slightly thicker than a pencil, using the rover's coring bit. Samples collected by Perseverance would be returned to Earth by a future Mars mission.

"One of  Israel's star cybersecurity companies, NSO Group, is at the center of an international spying scandal that has concerned U.S. officials, and the Israeli government plays a role". Read the full article

The sound of silence,
a sound which is cold,
as a wind from the North
is blowing. The chill of
the air is everywhere,
cutting through your
lightweight clothes. No matter
the class act you were,
or the sordid life which
you led. What good is
this life, when there is
no joy, no kindness,
left in the World?

I walked with you,
in our better days.
I talked to you,
about many things.
I speak to you,
my heart sings.
I share with you,
my love this day.
I think of you,
your mind, gone away.
I love you now
and will every day.

When a loved one,
leaves your life, suddenly,
there is time to grieve
and to heal.
When a loved one,
is lost by Dementia,
the body is there,
but no memories.
How do you heal
your broken heart,
when she sits
next to thee,
but remembers not
your time together?