Public Posts

German luger and Olympic champion Natalie Geisenberger.

Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

cheng feng on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

"A ghost in the Milky Way…” says Christian Bertincourt, the astrophotographer behind this striking image of Barnard 93 (B93). The 93rd entry in Barnard’s Catalogue of Dark Nebulae, B93 lies within the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24), where its darkness stands in stark contrast to bright stars and gas in the background. In some ways, B93 is really like a ghost, because it contains gas and dust that was dispersed by the deaths of stars, like supernovas. B93 appears as a dark void not because it is empty, but because its dust blocks the light emitted by more distant stars and glowing gas. Like other dark nebulas, some gas from B93, if dense and massive enough, will eventually gravitationally condense to form new stars. If so, then once these stars ignite, B93 will transform from a dark ghost into a brilliant cradle of newborn stars.

Photo by Christian Bertincourt; Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

This photochrom print depicts a male Irish peasant farmer standing in doorway while smoking a pipe. Today is International Pipe Smoking Day.

Photoglob Zürich, reprinted by Detroit Publishing Co., CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Horace - (65 BC –8 BC) - Roman lyric poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus commonly  known in the English-speaking world as Horace., he is considered one of the greatest Roman lyric poets. He is particularly known for his Odes, a collection of short poems that explore themes of love, friendship, philosophy, and politics. Horace's work was done during this period, known as the Golden Age of Roman literature during the under the reign of Augustus. More 

Ivan Sanford on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In fact, dwarf galaxy IC 2574 shows clear evidence of intense star forming activity in its telltale reddish regions of glowing hydrogen gas. Just as in spiral galaxies, the turbulent star-forming regions in IC 2574 are churned by stellar winds and supernova explosions spewing material into the galaxy's interstellar medium and triggering further star formation. A mere 12 million light-years distant, IC 2574 is part of the M81 group of galaxies, seen toward the northern constellation Ursa Major. Also known as Coddington's Nebula, the faint but intriguing island universe is about 50,000 light-years across, discovered by American astronomer Edwin Coddington in 1898.

Photo by Dane Vetter

Plains zebras (Equus quagga) in Maputo National Park, Mozambique.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

                   Sonnet

Oh for a poet—for a beacon bright
To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray; 
To spirit back the Muses, long astray,
And flush Parnassus with a newer light;
To put these little sonnet-men to flight
Who fashion, in a shrewd mechanic way, 
Songs without souls, that flicker for a day, 
To vanish in irrevocable night,

What does it mean, this barren age of ours? 
Here are the men, the women, and the flowers, 
The seasons, and the sunset, as before.
What does it mean? Shall there not one arise 
To wrench one banner from the western skies, 
And mark it with his name forevermore?

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935) was an American poet born in Maine. Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on three occasions and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
This poem is in the public domain.