Object Of The Week: Five-Draw Telescope, Unknown Maker, Italy, 1700-1750. 2018.8.5. 

Anastasia and Dennis Klaffert shot by Kat Irlin

And that is a wrap!

Get sucked into the black hole excitement? Find out more about these unique objects and the missions we have to study them, here. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

A wall of leaves, 28-08-2021

5.23.21

reading and annotating mansfield park. it’s one of my favorite books, and one of my favorite austen novels (is that a controversial opinion?) anyway, bonus points to whoever can guess what inspired my bookmark!

nature series 3/∞

Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Homer, The Iliad

When you feel you have lost everything, you still have

books

unexpected kindness in strangers

the rest of the world to travel

languages to learn

animals to take care of

volunteer work to do

the power of a good night’s rest

the changing of seasons

infinite things to learn

billions of people to meet and possibly love

billions of people who might love you back

Needed this today

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

- Rachel Carson

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.

If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.

—Glennon Doyle, Untamed

Mahmoud Darwish, from Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems; “The Hoopoe,”