Backup Blog for KaiYves

Dark Sky, Bright Sun

For example, a couple years ago, while learning Spanish, I encountered the word for a store, "la tienda." I thought "huh, that's a lot like tener (tiene) - the word for store in Spanish literally corresponds to 'to have/keep'. How interesting!"

NGC 6357: Cathedral to Massive Stars

Moon Joy June Week 3 – Crew

It’s the last week of Moon Joy June, and we’re feeling the love for our home planet.  This week’s prompt is “Earth,” so we’ve compiled some previously unreleased images of Earth captured by our Artemis II crew this past April. If you’re feeling inspired, share your creations on Tumblr with the #ArtemisArtShow hashtag!

2026 June 24

SDO Observes a Coronal Mass Ejection Video Credit: NASA, SDO, AIA; Processing: Richard Petarius III (MTU) Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

Explanation: Why does the Sun throw stuff at us? The Sun’s surface is a churning soup of energetic electrons and ions called plasma. The motion of those charged particles creates magnetic field loops that are larger than the Earth. These loops twist, turn, and trap plasma. The featured time-lapse, taken over 2 hours on April 24th, 2026 by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows what happens when those magnetic fields become too stressed: they snap and expel billions of tons (trillions of kilograms) of plasma into space at millions of miles (or kilometers) per hour in what is called a coronal mass ejection (CME). The Sun releases a few CMEs each day when it is at the peak of its activity cycle, which passed in 2025. Some of these eruptions hit Earth and can disrupt power grids, disable satellites, and endanger astronauts, which is why space weather monitoring is so important.