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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone that so generously donated. You don’t have to give anything to read my work, and yet so many of you donate or subscribe. I can’t express what that support means to me.

 

For those who still wish to support my work, please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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A galaxy as seen by Hubble and Webb

A galaxy seen by Hubble and Webb
Click for original image.

Cool image time. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on March 20, 2026 in a coordinated observations by both the Hubble and Webb space telescopes.

This March 20, 2026, image of Messier 64, or the Black Eye Galaxy, is a composite view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. It shows Messier 64 captured at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths by Webb, while Hubble’s image shows the galaxy in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light.

Messier 64 is characterized by its bizarre internal motion. The gas in the outer regions of this spiral galaxy is rotating in the opposite direction from the gas and stars in its inner regions. This strange behavior may be the result of a merger between M64 and a satellite galaxy over a billion years ago.

The red in this image is dust, as the galaxy gets its nickname from the dark streak that wraps around its nucleus on its left side. In optical that streak is dark. Here Webb’s infrared view sees it in false color red.

READERS: It appears that it is a very slow news day today. Other than SpaceX’s IPO, which is on-going and too soon to post any reports, I can so far find nothing much of great significance on which to report.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

1 comment

One comment

  • Dick Eagleson

    Nice picture. Why do I think it looks like the drain the Universe is going down?

    Re: the SpaceX IPO, Forbes now reports Elon to be worth $1.2 trillion – more than four times the net worth of the #2 man on the billionaires list, Google’s Larry Page.

    There will be people who will say this is not “fair.” I don’t agree. I think making big rockets is a lot more than four times as hard as making a search engine.

    There will be an ex-barmaid from Westchester County who will say Elon couldn’t earn that much and must have stolen it from the rest of us – especially the poor. Good trick stealing an additional $400 billion in a matter of hours. Do all of the poor in America, put together, even have $400 billion to steal?

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