mick laBriola

Stars are forming in the gigantic dust pillar called the Cone Nebula. Cones, pillars, and majestic flowing shapes abound in stellar nurseries where clouds of gas and dust are sculpted by energetic winds from newborn stars. The Cone Nebula, a well-known example, lies within the bright galactic star-forming region NGC 2264. The featured image of the Cone was captured recently combining 24-hours of exposure with a half-meter telescope at the El Sauce Observatory in Chile. Located about 2,500 light-years away toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros), the Cone Nebula‘s conical pillar extends about 7 light-years. The massive star NGC 2264 IRS, is the likely source of the wind sculpting the Cone Nebula and lies off the top of the image. The Cone Nebula‘s reddish veil is produced by glowing hydrogen gas.

Sir Roderick David Stewart CBE (born 10 January 1945) is a British rock and pop singer and songwriter. Born and raised in London, he is of Scottish and English ancestry. With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart is among the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 250 million records worldwide. He has had 10 number-one albums and 31 top ten singles in the UK, six of which reached number one. Stewart has had 16 top ten singles in the US, with four reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.

Stewart’s music career began in 1962 when he took up busking with a harmonica. In 1963, he joined The Dimensions as a harmonica player and vocalist. In 1964, Stewart joined Long John Baldry and the All Stars before moving to the Jeff Beck Group in 1967. Joining Faces in 1969, he also maintained a solo career releasing his debut album that year. Stewart’s early albums were a fusion of rock, folk music, soul music, and R&B. His third album, 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story, was his breakthrough, topping the charts in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, as did its ballad “Maggie May“. His 1972 follow-up album, Never a Dull Moment, also reached number one in the UK and Australia, while going top three in the US and Canada. Its single, “You Wear It Well“, topped the chart in the UK and was a moderate hit elsewhere.

After Stewart had a handful more UK top ten hits, the Faces broke up in 1975. Stewart’s next few hit singles were ballads with “Sailing“, off the 1975 UK and Australian number-one album, Atlantic Crossing, becoming a hit in the UK and the Netherlands (number one), Germany (number four) and other countries, but barely charting in North America. A Night on the Town (1976), his fifth straight chart-topper in the UK, began a three-album run of going number one or top three in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia with each release. That album’s “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” spent almost two months at number one in the US and Canada, and made the top five in other countries. Foot Loose & Fancy Free (1977) contained the hit “You’re in My Heart (The Final Acclaim)” as well as the rocker “Hot Legs”. Blondes Have More Fun (1978) and its disco-tinged “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” both went to number one in Canada, Australia and the US, with “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” also hitting number one in the UK and the top ten in other countries. Stewart’s albums regularly hit the upper rungs of the charts in the Netherlands throughout the 70s and in Sweden from 1975 onward.

After a disco and new wave period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stewart’s music turned to a soft rock/middle-of-the-road style, with most of his albums reaching the top ten in the UK, Germany and Sweden, but faring less well in the US. The single “Rhythm of My Heart” was a top five hit in the UK, US and other countries, with its source album, 1991’s Vagabond Heart, becoming, at number ten in the US and number two in the UK, his highest-charting album in a decade. In 1993, he collaborated with Bryan Adams and Sting on the power ballad “All for Love“, which went to number one in many countries. In the early 2000s, he released a series of successful albums interpreting the Great American Songbook.

In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked him the 17th most successful artist on the “Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists”. A Grammy and Brit Awardrecipient, he was voted at No. 33 in Q Magazine‘s list of the Top 100 Greatest Singers of all time. As a solo artist, Stewart was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and he was inducted a second time into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Faces.

Aynsley Thomas Dunbar (born 10 January 1946) is an English drummer. He has worked with John Mayall, Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, Journey, Jefferson Starship, Nils Lofgren, Eric Burdon, Shuggie Otis, Ian Hunter, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Mick Ronson, Whitesnake, Pat Travers, Sammy Hagar, Michael Schenker, UFO, Michael Chapman, Jake E. Lee, Leslie West, Kathi McDonald, Keith Emerson, Mike Onesko, Herbie Mann and Flo & Eddie. Dunbar was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Journey in 2017.

Aynsley Thomas Dunbar was born in Liverpool, England. He started his professional career in Derry Wilkie and the Pressmen in 1963. In December 1964 he joined Merseybeat group the Mojos, who were renamed Stu James & the Mojos, with original members vocalist Stu James and guitarist Nick Crouch and bass player Lewis Collins (later an actor in The Professionals). This line-up continued until 1966. Dunbar then auditioned for the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Hendrix had difficulty deciding between Dunbar and Mitch Mitchell – the latter won Hendrix’s coin flip.^{[citation needed]} Dunbar then joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers replacing Hughie Flint. He stayed with Mayall until the spring of 1967 (playing on the A Hard Road album), and was replaced by Mick Fleetwood.

Maxwell Lemuel Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.

In the mid-1950s, Roach co-led a pioneering quintet along with trumpeter Clifford Brown. In 1970, he founded the percussion ensemble M’Boom. He made numerous musical statements relating to the civil rights movement.

Max Roach was born to Alphonse and Cressie Roach in the Township of Newland, Pasquotank County, North Carolina, which borders the southern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. The Township of Newland is sometimes mistaken for Newland Town in Avery County, North Carolina. Although his birth certificate lists his date of birth as January 10, 1924, Roach has been quoted by Phil Schaap, saying that his family believed he was actually born on January 8, 1924.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the galaxy LEDA 48062 in the constellation Perseus. LEDA 48062 is the faint, sparse, amorphous galaxy on the right side of this image, and it is accompanied by a more sharply defined neighbour on the left, the large, disc-like lenticular galaxy UGC 8603. A smattering of more distant galaxies also litter the background, and a handful of foreground stars are also visible throughout the image. Have you ever wondered why the stars in Hubble images are surrounded by four sharp points? These are called diffraction spikes, and are created when starlight diffracts — or spreads around — the support structures inside reflecting telescopes like Hubble. The four spikes are due to the four thin vanes supporting Hubble’s secondary mirror and are only noticeable for bright objects like stars where a lot of light is concentrated on one spot. Darker, more spread-out objects like the galaxies LEDA 48062 and UGC 8603 do not possess visible diffraction spikes.  Hubble recently spent some time with our galactic neighbours. LEDA 48062 is only around 30 million light-years from the Milky Way, and was therefore included in the observing campaign Every Known Nearby Galaxy. The aim of this campaign was to observe precisely that: every known galaxy within 10 megaparsecs (around 33 million light-years) of the Milky Way. By getting to know our galactic neighbours, astronomers can determine what types of stars reside in various galaxies and also map out the local structure of the Universe. [Image description: A faint, scattered collection of cool stars in the form of an irregular galaxy lies right of centre. A disc-shaped galaxy viewed nearly edge-on lies to the left, surrounded by a wide glow. Several smaller galaxies in various orientations cluster around the two. The background is black and mostly empty.]

James Patrick Page OBE (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Page is prolific in creating guitar riffs. His style involves various alternative guitar tunings and melodic solos, coupled with aggressive, distorted guitar tones. It is also characterized by his folk and eastern-influenced acoustic work. He is also noted for occasionally playing his guitar with a cello bow to create a droning sound texture to the music.

Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain. He was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. When the Yardbirds broke up, he founded Led Zeppelin, which was active from 1968 to 1980. Following the death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, he participated in a number of musical groups throughout the 1980s and 1990s, more specifically XYZ, the Firm, the Honeydrippers, Coverdale–Page, and Page and Plant. Since 2000, Page has participated in various guest performances with many artists, both live and in studio recordings, and participated in a one-off Led Zeppelin reunion in 2007 that was released as the 2012 concert film Celebration Day. Along with the Edge and Jack White, he participated in the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud.

Page is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone magazine has described Page as “the pontiff of power riffing” and ranked him number three in their 2015 list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”, behind Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. In 2010, he was ranked number two in Gibson‘s list of “Top 50 Guitarists of All Time” and, in 2007, number four on Classic Rock‘s “100 Wildest Guitar Heroes”. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: once as a member of the Yardbirds (1992) and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995).

Joan Chandos Baez ( born January 9, 1941 Staten Island, NY) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages.

Baez is generally regarded as a folk singer, but her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country, and gospel music. She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 and Joan Baez in Concert, all achieved gold record status. Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers’ work, having recorded songs by the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, and many others. She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts.^[8][9] On her later albums she has found success interpreting the work of more recent songwriters, including Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant, and Joe Henry.

Baez’s acclaimed songs include “Diamonds & Rust” and covers of Phil Ochs‘s “There but for Fortune” and The Band‘s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down“. She is also known for “Farewell, Angelina“, “Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word“, “Forever Young“, “Here’s to You“, “Joe Hill”, “Sweet Sir Galahad” and “We Shall Overcome“. Baez performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights, and the environment. Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, 2017.