Public Posts

Explore major historical events from today or any day on Kudos 365.

BUT WE HAD MUSIC

Right this minute
across time zones and opinions
people are
making plans
making meals
making promises and poems

while

at the center of our galaxy
a black hole with the mass of
four billion suns
screams its open-mouth kiss
of oblivion.

Someday it will swallow
Euclid’s postulates and the Goldberg Variations,
swallow calculus and Leaves of Grass.

I know this.

And still
when the constellation of starlings
flickers across the evening sky,
it is enough

to stand here
for an irrevocable minute
agape with wonder.

It is eternity.

By Maria Popova Read more at the Marginalian

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sometimes, the Moon visits the Pleiades. Technically, this means that the orbit of our Moon takes it directly in front of the famous Pleiades star cluster, which is far in the distance. The technical term for the event is an occultation, and the Moon is famous for its rare occultations of all planets and several well-known bright stars. The Moon's tilted and precessing orbit makes its occultations of the Seven Sisters star cluster bunchy, with the current epoch starting in 2023 continuing monthly until 2029. After that, though, the next occultation won't occur until 2042. Taken from Cantabria, Spain on April 1, the featured image is a composite where previous exposures of the Pleiades from the same camera and location were digitally added to the last image to bring up the star cluster's iconic blue glow. Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

Portrait of a geometric moray (Gymnothorax griseus), Red Sea, Egypt. This moray eel belongs to the family Muraenidae and is found throughout the western Indian Ocean and Red Sea at depths to 40 metres (130 ft). Its length is up to 65 centimetres (26 in).

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How much mass do flocculent spirals hide? The featured image of flocculent spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope to help answer this question. Flocculent spirals -- galaxies without well-defined spiral arms -- are a quite common form of galaxy, and NGC 4414 is one of the closest. Stars and gas near the visible edge of spiral galaxies orbit the center so fast that the gravity from a large amount of unseen dark matter must be present to hold them together. Understanding the matter and dark matter distribution of NGC 4414 helps humanity calibrate the rest of the galaxy and, by deduction, flocculent spirals in general. Further, calibrating the distance to NGC 4414 helps humanity calibrate the cosmological distance scale of the entire visible universe.

Portrait of Billie Holiday and Mister, taken by William Gottlieb at the Downbeat Club, New York, 1947. Today, 110 years ago, she was born in Philadelphia.

William P. Gottlieb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Booker T. Washington (1856 – 1915) was an American educator, author, and orator. He was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite between 1890 and 1915, playing a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black community of the South and among more liberal whites. Washington was born into slavery in Hale's Ford, Virginia. He was freed when U.S. troops reached the area during the Civil War. In 1881, he was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an institute for black higher education. He expanded the college and enlisted students in construction of buildings. He attained national prominence for his Atlanta Exposition Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public. In 1901, Washington's published his autobiography, "Up from Slavery". Also in 1901, he became  the first black person publicly meeting the president on equal terms when he dined with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. 

Quote source: Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why are there so many moonquakes? Analyses of seismometers left on the moon during the Apollo moon landings reveal a surprising number of moonquakes occurring within 100 kilometers of the surface. In fact, 62 moonquakes were detected in data recorded between 1972 and 1977. Many of these moonquakes are not only strong enough to move furniture in a lunar apartment, but the stiff rock of the moon continues to vibrate for many minutes, significantly longer than the softer rock earthquakes on Earth. The cause of the moonquakes remains unknown, but a leading hypothesis include tidal gravity from -- and relative heating by -- our Earth. Regardless of the source, future moon dwellings need to be built to withstand the frequent shakings. Pictured here, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin stands beside a recently deployed lunar seismometer, looking back toward the lunar landing module. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator

View towards Signal Hill at night, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa.

Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.