Category: Daily Posts

May 18 Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2022 May 18

A Jewel on the Flower Moon

Image Credit & Copyright: Tomas Slovinsky

Explanation: Cloudy skies plagued some sky watchers on Sunday as May’s Full Flower Moon slipped through Earth’s shadow in a total lunar eclipse. In skies above Chile’s Atacama desert this telephoto snapshot still captured an awesome spectacle though. Seen through thin high cirrus clouds just before totality began, a last sliver of sunlit crescent glistens like a hazy jewel atop the mostly shadowed lunar disk. This full moon was near perigee, the closest point in its elliptical orbit. It passed near the center of Earth’s dark umbral shadow during the 90 minute long total eclipse phase. Faintly suffused with sunlight scattered by the atmosphere, the umbral shadow itself gave the eclipsed moon a reddened appearance and the very dramatic popular moniker of a Blood Moon.

A Laugh for Today

It can happen when there is no alcohol too!

Some of the Witchcraft/Magickal Correspondence Digest for Wednesday

 

Magickal Intentions: Communication, Divination, Writing, Knowledge, Business Transactions, Debt, Fear, Loss, Travel and Money Matters

Incense: Jasmine, Lavender, Sweet Pea

Planet: Mercury and Chiron (though this is a moon of Pluto)

Sign: Virgo

Angel: Raphael

Colors: Orange, Light Blue, Grey, Yellow and Violet

Herbs/Plants: Fern, Lavender, Hazel, Cherry, Periwinkle

Stones: Aventurine, Bloodstone, Hematite, Moss Agate and Sodalite

Oil: (Mercury) Benzoin, Clary Sage, Eucalyptus, Lavender

This day is governed by Mercury. Wednesday’s vibration adds power to rituals involving inspiration, communications, writers, poets, the written and spoken word, and all matters of study, learning, and teaching. This day also provides a good time to begin efforts involving self-improvement or understanding.

A Thought for Today

When doing spells for yourself set your intention that it will work just as you want it to. As you are writing the spell envision the outcome you want to happen.

Until we meet again dear sisters, brothers, and honored guests may you blessed be.

Some of the Witchcraft/Magickal Correspondence Digest for Tuesday

 

Tuesday (Tiw’s-day)

Planet: Mars

Colors: Red and Autumn Shades

Crystals: Bloodstone, Ruby, Garnet, Flint, Rhodonite, Iron and Steel

Aroma: Basil, Ginger, Black Pepper, Mars Oil, Dragon’s blood and patchouli

Herb: Basil

The day of Mars. This day could only ever symbolize the sheer power of the god of war! The ideal spells to be cast on this day are that of force, power war and protection.

Dedicated to the powers of the planet Mars, personified as Ares, Tiwaz, Tiw, and Tyr.

Magical aspects: controlled power, energy, and endurance, passion, sex, courage, aggression, and protection.

This is the proper day of the week to perform spells and rituals involving courage, physical strength, revenge, military honors, surgery, the breaking of negative spells, dynamic energy, matrimony, war, enemies, prison, hunting, politics, contests, protection, victory, and athletics.

May 17 Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2022 May 17

NGC 1316: After Galaxies Collide

Image Credit & Copyright: Capture: Greg Turgeon; Processing: Kiko Fairbairn

Explanation: Astronomers turn detectives when trying to figure out the cause of startling sights like NGC 1316. Investigations indicate that NGC 1316 is an enormous elliptical galaxy that started, about 100 million years ago, to devour a smaller spiral galaxy neighbor, NGC 1317, just on the upper right. Supporting evidence includes the dark dust lanes characteristic of a spiral galaxy, and faint swirls and shells of stars and gas visible in this wide and deep image. One thing that >remains unexplained is the unusually small globular star clusters, seen as faint dots on the image. Most elliptical galaxies have more and brighter globular clusters than NGC 1316. Yet the observed globulars are too old to have been created by the recent spiral collision. One hypothesis is that these globulars survive from an even earlier galaxy that was subsumed into NGC 1316. Another surprising attribute of NGC 1316, also known as Fornax A, is its giant lobes of gas that glow brightly in radio waves.

A Laugh for Today

Wishing you a fantastic Tuesday!

A Thought for Today

Until we meet again dear sisters, brothers, and honored guests may you blessed be.

May 16 Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2022 May 16

Milky Way over French Alp Hoodoos

Image Credit & Copyright: Benjamin Barakat

Explanation: Real castles aren’t this old. And the background galaxy is even older. Looking a bit like an alien castle, the pictured rock spires are called hoodoos and are likely millions of years old. Rare, but found around the world, hoodoos form when dense rocks slow the erosion of softer rock underneath. The pictured hoodoos survive in the French Alps and are named Demoiselles Coiffées — which translates to English as “Ladies with Hairdos“. The background galaxy is part of the central disk of our own Milky Way galaxy and contains stars that are typically billions of years old. The photogenic Cygnus sky region — rich in dusty dark clouds and red glowing nebulas — appears just above and behind the hoodoos. The featured image was taken in two stages: the foreground was captured during the evening blue hour, while the background was acquired from the same location later that night.

A Laugh for Today

Wishing you a mundane Monday!

A Thought for Today

Until we meet again dear sisters, brothers, and honored guests may you blessed be.

May 15 Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2022 May 15

Colors of the Moon

Image Credit & Copyright: Marcella Giulia Pace

Explanation: What color is the Moon? It depends on the night. Outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray. Viewed from inside the Earth’s atmosphere, though, the moon can appear quite different. The featured image highlights a collection of apparent colors of the full moon documented by one astrophotographer over 10 years from different locations across Italy. A red or yellow colored moon usually indicates a moon seen near the horizon. There, some of the blue light has been scattered away by a long path through the Earth’s atmosphere, sometimes laden with fine dust. A blue-colored moon is more rare and can indicate a moon seen through an atmosphere carrying larger dust particles. What created the purple moon is unclear — it may be a combination of several effects. The last image captures the total lunar eclipse of 2018 July — where the moon, in Earth’s shadow, appeared a faint red — due to light refracted through air around the Earth. Today there is not only another full moon but a total lunar eclipse visible to observers in North and South America — an occurrence that may lead to some unexpected lunar colorings.

A Laugh for Today

I hope you can enjoy a kicked back Sunday! I will be when I am done posting for today.

A Thought for Today

Until we meet again dear sisters, brothers, and honored guests may you blessed be.

May 14 Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2022 May 14

 

(To see where each of the following is located click here.) A complex of halo phenomena on the evening of April 15, 2022, Good Friday of the 2022 Easter weekend, around the almost Full Moon. Ice crystals in the high cloud created the halos and arcs, set in the spring night sky, with the Big Dipper at top, Arcturus to the left, and Regulus and Leo at right. The colours of the arcs and sundogs were just visible to the unaided eye.
Visible are:
— The 22° halo
— A large partial halo that looks like a 46° halo but is actually a supralateral arc.
— A pair of paraselene (called parhelia when they are around the Sun) or colourful “moondogs” sit on either side of the Moon just outside the 22° halo.
— The top of the 22° halo has a colourful upper tangent arc plus a faint Parry arc.
— Tangent to the supralateral arc is a rainbow-hued circumzenithal arc.
— A paraselenic (?) circle (called a parhelic circle when it is created by the Sun) runs parallel to the horizon through the moondogs and Moon.
— A faint and wide vertical light pillar also runs through the Moon up to the top arcs.
This is a blend of 7 exposures from 30 seconds to 1/20 seconds to help retain the disk of the Moon amid the bright and hazy sky. All with the 11mm TTArtisan full-frame fish-eye lens at f/4 and Canon R6 at ISO 100. Exposures blended with luminosity masks created with ADP Pro v3.

Ice Halos by Moonlight

Image Credit & Copyright: Alan Dyer, Amazingsky.com, TWAN

Explanation: An almost full moon on April 15 brought these luminous apparitions to a northern spring night over Alberta Canada. On that night, bright moonlight refracted and reflected by hexagonal ice crystals in high clouds created a complex of halos and arcs more commonly seen by sunlight in daytime skies. While the colors of the arcs and moondogs or paraselenae were just visible to the unaided eye, a blend of exposures ranging from 30 seconds to 1/20 second was used to render this moonlit wide-angle skyscape. The Big Dipper at the top of the frame sits just above a smiling and rainbow-hued circumzenithal arc. With Arcturus left and Regulus toward the right the Moon is centered in its often spotted 22 degree halo. May 15 will also see the bright light of a Full Moon shining in Earth’s night skies. Tomorrow’s Full Moon will be dimmed for a while though, as it slides through Earth’s shadow in a total lunar eclipse.

Watch: May 15-16 Total Lunar Eclipse

A Thought for Today

As the day ends the only person you need to be true of spirit to is yourself. Do not worry whether you are in or out of the broom closet as long as you follow the spiritual and magickal path that brings you happiness, contentment, and you feel at peace with.

Until we meet again dear sisters, brothers, and honored guests may you blessed be.

Some of the Witchcraft/Magickal Correspondence Digest for Friday

 

From GypsyWolf.weebly.com

Friday is the sixth day of the week, but used to be the seventh, the Sabbath of the Jewish lunar calendar.   The name, Friday,  is derived from the Nordic goddess, Frigg, Frigga, Freyja, Freya, or Frija (Germanic), considered to be the mother of all.  She is the Goddess of love and war, fertility and death.   She is the leader of the Valkyries and the Disir (Divine Grandmothers), and creator of Seidr magic.  Her symbols are the cat and the Brisingamen, which is the magic necklace of the rainbow bridge.  Freya’s Roman and Greek counterparts are Venus and Aphrodite, goddesses of love and beauty.
Latin: Dies Veneris, dedicated to Venus, the Roman Goddess of love
French: vendredi
Italian: venerdi
Spanish: viernes
Old High German: frigedag
German: Freitag
Dutch: vrijdag
Rules: Love, fidelity, reconciliation, interchanges, beauty, youth, joy, happiness, pleasure, luck, friendship, compassion, music, the arts.
Colors: Light Blue, Green, Pink, Copper Hues
Planet: Venus
Metal: Copper
Stones: Azurite, Calcite (blue, green & pink), Cat’s Eye, Chrysocolla, Chrysoprase, Coral, Emerald, Jade, Jasper (green), Kunzite, Lapis Lazuli, Malachite, Olivine, Peridot, Sodalite, Tourmaline (blue, green, pink & watermelon), Turquoise Malachite
Herbs: Apple Blossom, Cardamom, Crocus, Daisy, Geranium (rose), Heather, Hyacinth, Iris, Licorice, Lilac, Magnolia, Myrtle, Orchid, Orris, Plumeria, Rose, Spearmint, Stephanosis, Sweet Pea, Tansy, Thyme, Tonka, Tuberose, Vanilla, Violet, Willow, Ylang Ylang
Zodiac: Libra & Taurus