No known cat could have created the vast Cat’s Paw Nebula visible toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). At 5,700 light years distant, Cat’s Paw is an emission nebula within a larger molecular cloud. Alternatively known as the Bear Claw Nebula and cataloged as NGC 6334, stars nearly ten times the mass of our Sunhave been born there in only the past few million years. Pictured here is a recently released image of the Cat’s Paw taken in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope. This newly detailed view into the nebula helps provide insight for how turbulent molecular clouds turn gas into stars.

Donald Hugh Henley (born July 22, 1947) is an American musician who is a founding member of the rock band the Eagles, for whom he is the drummer and co-lead vocalist, as well as its sole continuous member. Henley sang the lead vocals on Eagles songs such as “Witchy Woman“, “Desperado“, “Best of My Love“, “One of These Nights“, “Hotel California“, “Life in the Fast Lane“, “Victim of Love“, “The Last Resort“, “The Long Run“, and “Get Over It“.

After the Eagles disbanded in 1980, Henley pursued a solo career and released his debut studio album I Can’t Stand Still, in 1982. He has released five studio albums, two compilation albums, and one live DVD. His solo tracks include “Dirty Laundry“, “The Boys of Summer“, “All She Wants to Do Is Dance“, “Sunset Grill“, “New York Minute”, “Not Enough Love in the World“, “The End of the Innocence“, “The Last Worthless Evening” and “The Heart of the Matter“.

The Eagles have sold over 150 million albums worldwide, won six Grammy Awards, had five number one singles, 17 top 40 singles, and six number one albums. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and are the highest selling American band in history. As a solo artist, Henley has sold over 10 million albums worldwide, had eight top 40 singles, won two Grammy Awards and five MTV Video Music Awards. Combined with the Eagles and as a solo artist, Henley has released 25 top 40 singles on the US Billboard Hot 100. He has also released seven studio albums with the Eagles and five as a solo artist. In 2008, he was ranked as the 87th greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.

Henley has also played a founding role in several environmental and political causes, including the Walden Woods Project. From 1994 to 2016, and 2017 to present, he divided his musical activities between the Eagles and his solo career, despite in recent years greater attention being paid to Eagles material.

George Edward Clinton (born July 22, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and bandleader. His Parliament-Funkadelic collective (which primarily recorded under the distinct band names Parliament and Funkadelic) developed an influential and eclectic form of funk music during the 1970s that drew on Afrofuturism, outlandish fashion, psychedelia, and surreal humor. He launched his solo career with the 1982 album Computer Games and would go on to influence 1990s hip-hop and G-funk.

Clinton is regarded, along with James Brown and Sly Stone, as one of the foremost innovators of funk music. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. In 2019, he and Parliament-Funkadelic were given Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Albert Laurence Di Meola (born July 22, 1954) is an American guitarist. Known for his work in jazz fusion and world music, his breakthrough came after joining Chick Corea‘s Return to Forever group in 1974. He launched, from 1976 afterwards, a successful and critically acclaimed solo career, noted for his technical mastery, complex compositions and explorations of Latin music. Highlights of his work are Elegant Gypsy, his Friday Night in San Francisco collaboration and the World Sinfonia trilogy.

An alumnus of Berklee College of Music and a Grammy Award winner, Di Meola’s successful career includes high-profile collaborations such as Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Larry Coryell, Steve Winwood, Jaco Pastorius, Paco de Lucía, Bill Bruford, John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer, Jean-Luc Ponty, Steve Vai and others.

Don Patterson (July 22, 1936 – February 10, 1988) was an American jazz organist.

Patterson played piano from childhood and was heavily influenced by Erroll Garner in his youth. In 1956, he switched to organ after hearing Jimmy Smith play the instrument.

In the early 1960s, he began playing regularly with Sonny Stitt, and he began releasing material as a leader on Prestige Records from 1964 (with Pat Martino and Billy James as sidemen). His most commercially successful album was 1964’s Holiday Soul, which reached #85 on the Billboard 200 in 1967.

Patterson’s troubles with drug addiction hobbled his career in the 1970s, during which he occasionally recorded for Muse Recordsand lived in Gary, Indiana. In the 1980s, he moved to Philadelphia and made a small comeback, but his health deteriorated over the course of the decade, and he died there in 1988.

Herman “Junior” Cook (July 22, 1934 – February 3, 1992) was an American hard bop tenor saxophone player.

Cook was born in Pensacola, Florida. A member of a musical family, he started on alto saxophone before switching to tenor during his high school years.

After playing with Dizzy Gillespie in 1958, Cook was a member of the Horace SilverQuintet (1958–1964); when Silver left the group in the hands of Blue Mitchell Cook stayed in the quintet for five more years (1964–1969). Later associations included Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, George Coleman, Louis Hayes (1975–1976), Bill Hardman (1979–1989), and the McCoy Tyner big band.

In addition to many appearances as a sideman, Junior Cook recorded as a leader for Jazzland (1961), Catalyst (1977), Muse, and SteepleChase.

He also taught at Berklee School of Music for a year during the 1970s.

In the early 1990s, Cook was playing with Clifford Jordan, and also leading his own group. He died in February 1992 in his apartment in New York City, aged 57.

July 22ne 1924 – 2003

Bill Perkins was essentially a West Coast jazz musician, but in his varied career worked with music legends like Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Art Pepper, Duke Ellington’s band, and with Victor Feldman played on some of Steely Dan’s legendary albums. A large part of his career was spent, playing with Doc Severinsen’s Tonight Show Band for nearly twenty five years.

Bill Perkins is one of the outstanding members of the legion of technically gifted and musically inspired tenor players who emerged at the beginning of the fifties. He was a hit with Kenton, and it is perhaps no coincidence that all of Kenton’s recordings that feature Perkins are good ones and they remain as fresh today as when they were recorded. Similarly his work on some of Woody Herman’s recordings from that time have achieved classic status, where his soloing is a showcase of delicacy and form.

Perkins recorded little under his own name, with notable exceptions as in “On Stage”The Bill Perkins Octet” (Vogue) which has him leading Bud Shank, Jack Nimitz, Carl Fontana, Stu Williamson, Russ Freeman, Red Mitchell and Mel Lewis, and “Journey To The East,” recorded 28 years later in 1984 (Contemporary) where the Lester Young influence, which has always affected his playing so strongly, is diverted by a palpable injection of Sonny Rollins. His “Perk Plays Prez,” from ’95, where he covers the music of Lester Young is a standout.He did release several discs recorded in a live setting.

He however recorded prolifically for other leaders, but was extremely modest about his success. Whilst with Kenton many beautiful settings were written for his tenor saxophone solos by Bill Holman and Bill Russo. “Yesterdays” probably became his best-known recording and was demanded at all Kenton’s concerts. Kenton toured Britain for the first time in 1956, and Perkins remained particularly popular there for the rest of his career.

It was at this point that Perkins began making innumerable albums of West Coast jazz that became classics. Whilst with Kenton and Herman he also recorded regularly as a member of Shorty Rogers’s Giants, with his solo making the trumpeter’s “Blues for Brando” a substantial hit for both of them. Some of Perkins’s finest playing of the period was on a 1956 quintet album with John Lewis, pianist in the Modern Jazz Quartet, entitled “Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West.”

He worked in the film studios as well, where his most notable experience was working under Duke Ellington for the soundtrack of “Assault on a Queen” (1966). In the middle Seventies he played baritone sax with the Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band and returned to Herman for occasional guest solo spots. During the middle Eighties he toured the world with a Shorty Rogers group and in 1986, on one of his visits to Britain, toured with a quintet he co-led with the British tenorist Tommy Whittle. In 1991 Perkins recorded under his own name with a big band designed to recall the spirit of, rather than to copy, the Woody Herman band.

The swirling spiral galaxy in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is NGC 3285B, which resides 137 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra (The Water Snake). Hydra has the largest area of the 88 constellations that cover the entire sky in a celestial patchwork. It’s also the longest constellation, stretching 100 degrees across the sky. It would take nearly 200 full Moons, placed side by side, to reach from one side of the constellation to the other.

NGC 3285B is a member of the Hydra I cluster, one of the largest galaxy clusters in the nearby Universe. Galaxy clusters are collections of hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound to one another by gravity. The Hydra I cluster is anchored by two giant elliptical galaxies at its centre. Each of these galaxies is about 150,000 light-years across, making them about 50% larger than our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

NGC 3285B sits on the outskirts of its home cluster, far from the massive galaxies at the centre. This galaxy drew Hubble’s attention because it hosted a Type Ia supernova in 2023. Type Ia supernovae happen when a type of condensed stellar core called a white dwarf detonates, igniting a sudden burst of nuclear fusion that briefly shines about 5 billion times brighter than the Sun. The supernova, named SN 2023xqm, is visible here as a blue-ish dot on the left edge of the galaxy’s disc.

Hubble observed NGC 3285B as part of an observing programme that targeted 100 Type Ia supernovae. By viewing each of these supernovae in ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared light, researchers aim to disentangle the effects of distance and dust, both of which can make a supernova appear redder than it actually is. This programme will help refine cosmic distance measurements that rely on observations of Type Ia supernovae.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy with a disc made up of several swirling arms. Patchy blue clouds of gas are speckled over the disc, where stars are forming and lighting up the gas around them. The core of the galaxy is large and shines brightly gold, while the spiral arms are a paler and faint reddish colour. Neighbouring galaxies – from small, elongated spots to larger swirling spirals – can be seen across the black background.]