mick laBriola

This featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that star cluster NGC 1850‘s size and shape are reminiscent of the many ancient globular star clusters which roam our own Milky Way Galaxy’s halo. But NGC 1850’s stars are all too young, making it a type of star cluster with no known counterpart in the Milky Way. Moreover, NGC 1850 is also a double star cluster, with a second, compact cluster of stars visible here just to the right of the large cluster’s center. Stars in the large cluster are estimated to be 50 million years young, while stars in the compact cluster are younger still, with an age of about 4 million years. A mere 168,000 light-years distant, NGC 1850 is located near the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. The glowing gas filaments across the image left, like supernova remnants in our own galaxy, testify to violent stellar explosions and indicate that short-lived massive stars have recently been present in the region.

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop.

The sixth of eight children born from a poor family in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist. With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. She then applied for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where, despite a well received audition, she was denied admission, which she attributed to racism. In 2003, just days before her death, the Institute awarded her an honorary degree.

To make a living, Simone started playing piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to “Nina Simone” to disguise herself from family members, having chosen to play “the devil’s music” or so-called “cocktail piano”. She was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her own accompaniment, which effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist. She went on to record more than 40 albums between 1958 and 1974, making her debut with Little Girl Blue. She had a hit single in the United States in 1958 with “I Loves You, Porgy“. Her musical style fused gospel and pop with classical music, in particular Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.

Simone was born on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. Her father, John Divine Waymon, worked as a barber and dry-cleaner as well as an entertainer, and her mother, Mary Kate Irvin, was a Methodist preacher. The sixth of eight children.

A massive galaxy cluster in the constellation Cetus dominates the centre of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This image is populated with a serene collection of elliptical and spiral galaxies, but galaxies surrounding the central cluster — which is named SPT-CL J0019-2026 — appear stretched into bright arcs, as if distorted by a gargantuan magnifying glass. This cosmic contortion is called gravitational lensing, and it occurs when a massive object like a galaxy cluster has a sufficiently powerful gravitational field to distort and magnify the light from background objects. Gravitational lenses magnify light from objects that would usually be too distant and faint to observe, and so these lenses can extend Hubble’s view even deeper into the Universe. This observation is part of an ongoing project to fill short gaps in Hubble’s observing schedule by systematically exploring the most massive galaxy clusters in the distant Universe, in the hopes of identifying promising targets for further study with both Hubble and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This particular galaxy cluster lies at a vast distance of 4.6 billion light years from Earth. Each year, the Space Telescope Science Institute is inundated with observing proposals for Hubble, in which astronomers suggest targets for observation. Even after selecting only the very best proposals, scheduling observations of all of Hubble’s targets for a year is a formidable task. There is sometimes a small fraction of observing time left unused in Hubble’s schedule, so in its ‘spare time’ the telescope has a collection of objects to explore — including the lensing galaxy cluster shown in this image. [Image description: A cluster of large galaxies, surrounded by various stars and smaller galaxies on a dark background. The central cluster is mostly made of bright elliptical galaxies that are surrounded by a warm glow.

Buffy Sainte-Marie, CC (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian-American (Piapot Cree Nation) singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. While working in these areas, her work has focused on issues facing Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. She has won recognition, awards and honours for her music as well as her work in education and social activism. Among her most popular songs are “Universal Soldier“, “Cod’ine“, “Until It’s Time for You to Go“, “Take My Hand for a While”, “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone“, and her versions of Mickey Newbury‘s “Mister Can’t You See” and Joni Mitchell‘s “The Circle Game“. Her songs have been recorded by many artists including Donovan, Joe Cocker, Jennifer Warnes, Janis Joplin, and Glen Campbell.

In 1983, she became the first Indigenous American person to win an Oscar, when her song “Up Where We Belong“, co-written for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, won the Academy Award for Best Original Songat the 55th Academy Awards. The song also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song that same year.

In 1997, she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans.

Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot 75 reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada, to Cree parents. At age two or three she was taken from her parents as part of the Sixties Scoop – a government policy where Indigenous children were taken from their families, communities and cultures for placement in non-First Nations families.

Known for its iconic blue stars, the Pleiades is shown here in infrared light where the surrounding dust outshines the stars. Here three infrared colors have been mapped into visual colors (R=24, G=12, B=4.6 microns). The base images were taken by NASA’s orbiting Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft. Cataloged as M45 and nicknamed the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades star cluster is by chance situated in a passing dust cloud. The light and winds from the massive Pleiades stars preferentially repel smaller dust particles, causing the dust to become stratified into filaments, as seen. The featured image spans about 20 light years at the distance of the Pleiades, which lies about 450 light years distant toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus).

Robert Edward Rogers (February 19, 1940 – March 3, 2013) was an American musician and tenor singer, best known as a member of Motown vocal group the Miracles from 1956 until his death. He was inducted, in 2012, as a member of the Miracles to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to singing, he also contributed to writing some of the Miracles’ songs. Rogers is the grandfather of R&B singer Brandi Williams from the R&B girl group Blaque and is a cousin of fellow Miracles member Claudette Rogers Robinson.

Rogers was the son of Robert and Lois Rogers. He was born in Detroit on February 19, 1940, the same day and in the same Detroit hospital as fellow Miracles member Smokey Robinson, although the two would not meet until 15 years later.

On December 18, 1963, Rogers married Wanda Young of Inkster, Michigan, a member of Motown group the Marvelettes. Together they had a son Robert Rogers III and a daughter Bobbae. Rogers and Young divorced in 1975 after twelve years of marriage. In 1981, Rogers married Joan Hughes on his forty-first birthday. The wedding ceremony was officiated by the Reverend Cecil Franklin, the older brother of Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin at Detroit’s historic New Bethel Baptist Church. Bobby and Joan had two children together, daughters Gina and Kimberly. In his final years, Rogers divided his residence between his primary dwelling in Southfield, Michigan, a northern suburb of Detroit, and a Beverly Hills, California pied-à-terre.

The 1960 single “Shop Around“, with Smokey Robinson on lead, was Motown’s first number one hit on the R&B singles chart, and the first big hit for the Miracles. The song was also Motown’s first million selling hit single. The Miracles scored many more hits over the years including the #1 classics “Tears Of A Clown”, and “Love Machine”.

In addition to his work in the Miracles, Rogers was a part-time Motown songwriter; his most notable composition, authored with bandmate Smokey Robinson, was The Temptations‘ first hit single, “The Way You Do the Things You Do“. Rogers also co-wrote The Temptations’ 1965 hit “My Baby“, Mary Wells’ hit, “What Love Has Joined Together“, The Contours‘ 1965 hit “First I Look at the Purse“, (later covered by the J. Geils Band), Marvin Gaye’s 1966 Top 40 hit, “One More Heartache” and the Miracles’ own 1964 Top 40 hit, “That’s What Love Is Made Of“, and their 1966 hit, “Going to a Go-Go“. He is also noted for doing co-lead vocals on the Miracles’ 1962 Top 10 smash, “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me“, and singing lead on the group’s 1964 song, “You’re So Fine And Sweet”. Bobby was also reputed to be the group’s best dancer, and was responsible for many of the Miracles’ onstage routines, until the arrival of famed Motown choreographer Cholly Atkins.