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Looking through these three windows on history reminds us that while the tools of civilization evolve, the human story continues to be driven by many of the same hopes, challenges, and ambitions that have shaped every generation. Continue reading

Flower buds of a shrubby St. John's wort (Hypericum androsaemum). Focus stack of 25 photos.

Dominicus Johannes Bergsma., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Isabelle Simier - French writer and illustrator. She is an author and illustrator of children's books. She holds a degree in decorative arts from the University of Strasbourg. Her first book, Plume, has been recommended by the French Bird Protection League (LPO).

Quote Source : The Blue Hour by Isabelle Simier. Image credit: Calob Photography.

David Clode on Unsplash

These unusual rays have a comical look to them. This one seemed to pose for me, and seemed to want to be photographed. 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

It was visible around the world. The sunset conjunction of Jupiter (left) and Venus (right) in 2012 was visible almost no matter where you lived on Earth. Anyone on our planet with a clear western horizon at sunset could see them. That year, a creative photographer traveled away from the town lights of Szubin, Poland to photograph a near closest approach of the two planets. The bright planets were then separated by only three degrees and his daughter struck a humorous pose. A faint red sunset still glowed in the background. Jupiter and Venus are together again this week after sunset, passing within a degree of each other about two days from today.

Photo by Marek Nikodem (PPSAE)

Zapornia pusilla (Baillon's Crake) in Baruipur, West Bengal, India.

Tisha Mukherjee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Bruno Kelzer on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A darkened and mysterious north polar region known to some as Mordor Macula caps this premier view of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. The high-resolution image was captured by the interplanetary space probe New Horizons near its closest approach to distant Pluto on July 14, 2015. The combined blue, red, and infrared image data was processed to enhance colors and follow variations in Charon's surface properties with a resolution of about 2.9 kilometers (1.8 miles). A stunning image of Charon's Pluto-facing hemisphere, it also features a clear view of an apparently moon-girdling belt of fractures and canyons that seems to separate smooth southern plains from varied northern terrain. Charon is 1,214 kilometers (754 miles) across. That's about 1/10th the size of planet Earth but a whopping 1/2 the diameter of Pluto itself, and makes it the largest satellite relative to its parent body in the Solar System. Still, the moon appears as a small bump at about the 1 o'clock position on Pluto's disk in the grainy, negative, telescopic picture inset at upper left. That image was used by James Christy and Robert Harrington at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff to discover Charon in June of 1978.