Category: Music

July 12, 2022: From the stars above comes the half-remarkable question

Writes NASA July 12, 2022

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Today, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephan’s Quintet in a new light. This enormous mosaic is Webb’s largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.

With its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, Webb captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.

The Summer in Song: July 17, 2021

2,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Lyra

Writes NASA Heritage Project:

Ring Around the Cosmos

Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial band. This planetary nebula’s simple, graceful appearance is thought to be due to perspective — our view from Earth looking straight into what is actually a barrel-shaped cloud of gas shrugged off by a dying central star.

Astronomers of the Hubble Heritage Project produced this strikingly sharp image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope by using natural colors to indicate the temperature of the stellar gas shroud. Hot blue gas near the energizing central star gives way to progressively cooler green and yellow gas at greater distances with the coolest red gas along the outer boundary. The Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Lyra.

Zac Brown Band, “Same Boat”

The Good Old Summertime

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..

“Obe” Young & Sally Brown, Lake Waccamaw, North Carolina,  (July 4, 1904)

Billy Murray, “In the Good Old Summertime” (1904)

You hold her hand and she holds yours
And that’s a very good sign
That she’s your tootsey-wootsey
In the good, old summertime

 

Cornel West on Love, Wuthering Heights, and Franz Schubert

“The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high — and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship in Emily Bronte’s remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert’s tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!”

Cornel West : Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud