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This flower-shaped nebula, also known by the less romantic name NGC 2237, is a huge star-forming cloud of dust and gas in our Milky Way galaxy. Estimates of the nebula’s distance vary from 4,500 to 5,000 light-years away.

At the center of the flower is a cluster of young stars called NGC 2244. The most massive stars produce huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation, and blow strong winds that erode away the nearby gas and dust, creating a large, central hole. The radiation also strips electrons from the surrounding hydrogen gas, ionizing it and creating what astronomers call an HII region.

Although the Rosette nebula is too faint to see with the naked eye, NGC 2244 is beloved by amateur astronomers because it is visible through a small telescope or good pair of binoculars. The English astronomer John Flamsteed discovered the star cluster NGC 2244 with a telescope around 1690, but the nebula itself was not identified until John Herschel (son of William Herschel, discoverer of infrared light) observed it almost 150 years later.

The streak seen at lower left is the trail of a satellite, captured as WISE snapped the multiple frames that make up this view.

This image is a four-color composite created by all four of WISE’s infrared detectors. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust.

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A six-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Taylor is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No. 3 single “Fire and Rain” and had his first No. 1 hit in 1971 with his recording of “You’ve Got a Friend“, written by Carole King in the same year. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million copies in the US alone. Following his 1977 album JT, he has retained a large audience over the decades. Every album that he released from 1977 to 2007 sold over 1 million copies. He enjoyed a resurgence in chart performance during the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of his most-awarded work (including Hourglass, October Road, and Covers). He achieved his first number-one album in the US in 2015 with his recording Before This World.

Taylor is also known for his covers, such as “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” and “Handy Man“, as well as originals such as “Sweet Baby James“. He played the leading role in Monte Hellman‘s 1971 film Two-Lane Blacktop.

James Vernon Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on March 12, 1948. His father, Isaac M. Taylor, worked as a resident physician at the hospital and came from a wealthy Southernfamily. Taylor is of English and Scottish descent from the Taylor family of the Montrose area, with the former being rooted in Massachusetts Bay Colony; his ancestors include Edmund Rice, an English colonist who co-founded Sudbury, Massachusetts.

Wardell Joseph Quezergue  March 12, 1930 – September 6, 2011) was an American composer, arranger, record producer and bandleader, known among New Orleans musicians as the “Creole Beethoven”. Steeped in jazz, he was an influential musician whose work shaped the sound of New Orleans rhythm and blues, funk and pop music. His role as an arranger and producer kept him out of the spotlight and enabled him to enhance the careers of many. He was a staple of the New Orleans music scene and the recipient of an honorary doctorate in music.

Quezergue was born in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans into a musical family of creole descent. His father Sidney Quezergue Sr. played guitar and his mother Violetta Guimont played clarinet. His older brothers, Sidney Jr. and Leo, were jazz musicians. Sidney played the trumpet and Leo played the drums. The family played together on Sundays. Quezergue had no formal music training. He was influenced by Louis Armstrong, Harry James and Dizzy Gillespie. As a teenager he played the trumpet professionally and started to compose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48ymr_iFvHw

Beverly Cottman Memorial
Just learned about Beverly Cottmans passing today while she was touring Egypt. A wonderful educator, theater and literary artist, Beverly was a sight to behold offering the world a brilliant vision of unity and collective cultural awakening. She was always an inspiration. I first met her while I was working with Jamaican choreographer Paulette Cousins and the Jamaican Dance Company. And she and her husband Bill would frequent my performances with Ancestor Energy over the years. I also remember Beverly & Bill wildly dancing to the Maroons on many occasions! Always empowering the artists with confidence and an overwhelming joy. Have a great new adventure Beverly!

Only a few days late, India March 8th

In the constellation Cassiopeia. Located about 6,000 light-years from Earth, the Heart and Soul nebulae form a vast star-forming complex that makes up part of the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. The nebula to the right is the Heart, designated IC 1805 and named after its resemblance to a human heart. To the left is the Soul nebula, also known as the Embryo nebula, IC 1848 or W5. The Perseus arm lies further from the center of the Milky Way than the arm that contains our sun. The Heart and Soul nebulae stretch out nearly 580 light-years across, covering a small portion of the diameter of the Milky Way, which is roughly 100,000 light-years across.

The two nebulae are both massive star-making factories, marked by giant bubbles that were blown into surrounding dust by radiation and winds from the stars. WISE’s infrared vision allows it to see into the cooler and dustier crevices of clouds like these, where gas and dust are just beginning to collect into new stars. These stars are less than a few million of years old — youngsters in comparison to stars like the sun, which is nearly 5 billion years old.

Also visible near the bottom of this image are two galaxies, Maffei 1 and Maffei 2. Both galaxies contain billions of stars and, at about 10 million light-years away, are well outside our Milky Way yet relatively close compared to most galaxies. Maffei 1 is the bluish elliptical object and Maffei 2 is the spiral galaxy.

All four infrared detectors aboard WISE were used to make this image. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust.

Robert Keith McFerrin Jr. (born March 11, 1950) is an American folk and jazz singer. He is known for his vocal techniques, such as singing fluidly but with quick and considerable jumps in pitch—for example, sustaining a melody while also rapidly alternating with arpeggios and harmonies—as well as scat singing, polyphonic overtone singing, and improvisational vocal percussion. He is widely known for performing and recording regularly as an unaccompanied solo vocal artist. He has frequently collaborated with other artists from both the jazz and classical scenes.

McFerrin’s song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” was a No. 1 U.S. pop hit in 1988 and won Song of the Year and Record of the Year honors at the 1989 Grammy Awards. McFerrin has also worked in collaboration with instrumentalists, including the pianists Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul, the drummer Tony Williams, and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

McFerrin was born in Manhattan, New York City in 1950, the son of operatic baritone Robert McFerrin and singer Sara Copper. He attended Cathedral High School in Los Angeles, Cerritos College, University of Illinois Springfield (then known as Sangamon State University) and California State University, Sacramento.

His mother Sara (Copper) McFerrin was a soloist and taught voice at Fullerton College in Southern California. McFerrin’s first recorded work, the self-titled album Bobby McFerrin, was not produced until 1982, when McFerrin was already 31 years old. Before that, he had spent six years developing his musical style, the first two years of which he attempted not to listen to other singers at all, in order to avoid sounding like them. He was influenced by Keith Jarrett, who had achieved great success with a series of solo improvised piano concerts including The Köln Concert of 1975, and wanted to attempt something similar vocally.

Alex or Aleck Miller (originally Ford, possibly December 5, 1912 – May 24, 1965), known later in his career as Sonny Boy Williamson, was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He was an early and influential blues harp stylist who recorded successfully in the 1950s and 1960s. Miller used various names, including Rice Miller and Little Boy Blue, before calling himself Sonny Boy Williamson, which was also the name of a popular Chicago blues singer and harmonica player. To distinguish the two, Miller has been referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson II.

He first recorded with Elmore James on “Dust My Broom“. Some of his popular songs include “Don’t Start Me Talkin’“, “Help Me“, “Checkin’ Up on My Baby“, and “Bring It On Home“. He toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival and recorded with English rock musicians, including the Yardbirds and Animals. “Help Me” became a blues standard, and many blues and rock artists have recorded his songs.

Miller’s date and place of birth are disputed. There are various opinions about his year of birth, five of which are 1897, 1899, 1907, 1909, and 1912. According to David Evans, professor of music and an ethnomusicologist at the University of Memphis, census records indicate that Miller was born in about 1912, being seven years old on February 2, 1920, the day of the census. Miller’s gravestone at Tutwiler, Mississippi, set up by record company owner Lillian McMurry twelve years after his death, gives his date of birth as March 11, 1908. In a spoken word performance called “The Story of Sonny Boy Williamson” that was later included in several compilations, Miller states that he was born in Glendora, Mississippi in 1897. According to researchers Bob Eagle and Eric S. LeBlanc, he was born in the small community of Money, near Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1912.\