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As the name implies, the ion tail is made of ionized gas — gas energized by ultraviolet light from the Sun and pushed outward by the solar wind. The solar wind is quite structured and sculpted by the Sun’s complex and ever changing magnetic field. The effect of the variable solar wind combined with different gas jets venting from the comet’s nucleus accounts for the tail’s complex structure. Following the wind, structure in Comet Leonard’s tail can be seen to move outward from the Sun even alter its wavy appearance over time. The blue color of the ion tail is dominated by recombining carbon monoxide molecules, while the green color of the coma surrounding the head of the comet is created mostly by a slight amount of recombining diatomic carbon molecules. Diatomic carbon is destroyed by sunlight in about 50 hours — which is why its green glow does not make it far into the ion tail. The featured image was taken on January 2 from Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Comet Leonard, presently best viewed from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, has rounded the Sun and is now headed out of the Solar System.

John William “Long John” Baldry (12 January 1941 – 21 July 2005) was an English-Canadian blues singer, musician and voice actor. In the 1960s, he was one of the first British vocalists to sing the blues in clubs and shared the stage with many British musicians including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Before achieving stardom, Rod Stewart and Elton John were members of bands led by Baldry. He enjoyed pop success in 1967 when “Let the Heartaches Begin” reached No. 1 in the UK, and in Australia where his duet with Kathi McDonald “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” reached No. 2 in 1980.

Baldry lived in Canada from the late 1970s until his death. He continued to make records there, and do voiceover work. Two of his best-known voice roles were as Dr. Ivo Robotnik in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and as KOMPLEX in Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars.

John Baldry was born at East Haddon Hall, East Haddon, Northamptonshire, which was serving as a makeshift wartime maternity ward, on 12 January 1941, the son of William James Baldry (1915–1990), a Metropolitan Police constable and his wife, Margaret Louisa née Parker (1915–1989); their usual address was recorded as 18 Frinton Road, East Ham. His height was noticed as a baby thus giving him his “Long” nickname during his childhood.

George M. Duke (January 12, 1946 – August 5, 2013) was an American keyboardist, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer. He worked with numerous artists as arranger, music director, writer and co-writer, record producer and as a professor of music. He first made a name for himself with the album The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio. He was known primarily for thirty-odd solo albums, of which A Brazilian Love Affair from 1979 was his most popular, as well as for his collaborations with other musicians, particularly Frank Zappa.

George M Duke was born in San Rafael, California, United States, to Thadd Duke and Beatrice Burrell and raised in Marin City. At four years old, he became interested in the piano. His mother took him to see Duke Ellington in concert and told him about this experience. “I don’t remember it too well, but my mother told me I went crazy. I ran around saying ‘Get me a piano, get me a piano!'” He began his formal piano studies at the age of seven at a local Baptist church.

He attended Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley before earning a bachelor’s degree in trombone and composition with a minor in contrabass from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1967. He earned a master’s degree in composition from San Francisco State University in 1975.

Although Duke started playing classical music, he credited his cousin Charles Burrell for convincing him to switch to jazz.He explained that he “wanted to be free” and Burrell “more or less made the decision for me” by convincing him to “improvise and do what you want to do”. He taught a course on jazz and American culture at Merritt College in Oakland. He died on August 5, 2013, in Los Angeles, at the age of 67 from chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Ronald Shannon Jackson (January 12, 1940 – October 19, 2013) was an American jazz drummer and composer from Fort Worth, Texas. A pioneer of avant-garde jazz, free funk, and jazz fusion, he appeared on over 50 albums as a bandleader, sideman, arranger, and producer. Jackson and bassist Sirone are the only musicians to have performed and recorded with the three prime shapers of free jazz: pianist Cecil Taylor, and saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler.

Musician, Player and Listener magazine writers David Breskin and Rafi Zabor called him “the most stately free-jazz drummer in the history of the idiom, a regal and thundering presence.”^[3] Gary Giddins wrote “Jackson is an astounding drummer, as everyone agrees…he has emerged as a kind of all-purpose new-music connoisseur who brings a profound and unshakably individual approach to every playing situation.”

In 1979, he founded his own group, the Decoding Society, playing what has been dubbed free funk: a blend of funk rhythm and free jazzimprovisation.

Jackson was born in Fort Worth, Texas. As a child, he was immersed in music. His father monopolized the local jukebox business and established the only African American-owned record store in the Fort Worth area. His mother played piano and organ at their local church. Between the ages of five and nine he took piano lessons.^[5] In the third grade, he studied music with John Carter.

Jackson graduated from I.M. Terrell High School, where he played with the marching band and learned about symphonic percussion. During lunch breaks, students would conduct jam sessions in the band room.

James Columbus “Jay” McShann (January 12, 1916 – December 7, 2006) was a jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and bandleader. He led bands in Kansas City, Missouri, that included Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Walter Brown, and Ben Webster.

McShann was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and was nicknamed Hootie. During his youth he taught himself how to play the piano through observing his sister’s piano lessons and trying to practicing tunes he heard off the radio. He was also heavily influenced by late-night broadcasts of pianist Earl Hines from Chicago’s Grand Terrace Cafe: “When ‘Fatha’ (Hines) went off the air, I went to bed”. He began working as a professional musician in 1931 at the age of 15, performing around Tulsa, Oklahoma, and neighboring Arkansas.

Fred McDowell (January 12, 1906 – July 3, 1972), known by his stage name Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American hill country bluessinger and guitar player.

McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee, United States. His parents were farmers, who both died while Fred was in his youth. He took up the guitar at the age of 14 and was soon playing for tips at dances around Rossville. Seeking a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926, where he worked in the Buck-Eye feed mill, which processed cotton into oil and other products. In 1928, he moved to Mississippi to pick cotton. He finally settled in Como, Mississippi, in 1940 or 1941 (or maybe the late 1930s), where he worked as a full-time farmer for many years while continuing to play music on weekends at dances and picnics.

After decades of playing for small local gatherings, McDowell was recorded in 1959 by roving folklore musicologist Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins,on their Southern Journey field-recording trip. With interest in blues and folk music rising in the United States at the time, McDowell’s field recordings for Lomax caught the attention of blues aficionados and record producers, and within a couple of years, he had finally become a professional musician and recording artist in his own right. His LPs proved quite popular, and he performed at festivals and clubs all over the world.

You may have seen Orion’s belt before — but not like this. The three bright stars across this image are, from left to right, Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak: the iconic belt stars of Orion. The rest of the stars in the frame have been digitally removed to highlight the surrounding clouds of glowing gas and dark dust. Some of these clouds have intriguing shapes, including the Horsehead and Flame Nebulas, both near Alnitak on the lower right. This deep image, taken last month from the Marathon Skypark and Observatory in Marathon, Texas, USA, spans about 5 degrees, required about 20 hours of exposure, and was processed to reveal the gas and dust that we would really see if we were much closer. The famous Orion Nebula is off to the upper right of this colorful field. The entire region lies only about 1,500 light-years distant and so is one of the closest and best studied star formation nurseries known.

Lee Mack Ritenour (/ˈrɪtnər/ RIT-nər; born January 11, 1952) is an American jazz guitarist who has been active since the late 1960s.

Ritenour was born on January 11, 1952 in Los Angeles, California, United States. At the age of eight he started playing guitar and four years later decided on a career in music. When he was 16 he played on his first recording session with the Mamas & the Papas. He developed a love for jazz and was influenced by guitarist Wes Montgomery. At the age of 17 he worked with Lena Horne and Tony Bennett. He studied classical guitar at the University of Southern California.

Ritenour’s solo career began with the album First Course (1976), a good example of the jazz-funk sound of the 1970s, followed by Captain Fingers, The Captain’s Journey (1978), and Feel the Night (1979).

Slim Harpo (born James Isaac Moore; January 11, 1924 – January 31, 1970) was an American blues musician, a leading exponent of the swamp blues style, and “one of the most commercially successful blues artists of his day”. He played guitar and was a master of the blues harmonica, known in blues circles as a “harp”. His most successful and influential recordings included “I’m a King Bee” (1957), “Rainin’ in My Heart” (1961), and “Baby Scratch My Back” (1966), which reached number one on Billboard‘s R&B chart and number 16 on its broader Hot 100 singles chart.

Moore was born in Lobdell, Louisiana, the eldest child in his family. After his parents died he worked as a longshoreman and construction worker in New Orleans in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Influenced in style by Jimmy Reed, he began performing in Baton Rouge bars using the name “Harmonica Slim”, and also accompanied his brother-in-law Lightnin’ Slim in live performances.

Calvin “Cal” Massey (January 11, 1928 – October 25, 1972) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, Massey studied trumpet under Freddie Webster, and following this played in the big bands of Jay McShann, Jimmy Heath, and Billie Holiday. After that he mainly worked as a composer. Growing up, Massey had two cousins in the Philadelphia area who were, like him, interested in jazz and the arts. Massey’s cousin Bill Massey, also a jazz trumpet player, composed music for and played on several Prestige recording sessions for alto saxophonist Sonny Stitt in the early 1950s. His cousin Calvin L. Massey (1926–2019), who also known professionally as Cal Massey (and who was a brother to Bill Massey) was a jazz pianist in the 1960s before becoming a visual artist. Calvin L. Massey worked as monument designer (with sculptures at Valley Forge and Ellis Island) and illustrator at Marvel Comics, and later was an independent painter and sculptor. Massey died from a heart attack at the age of 44 in New York City, New York. His son, Zane Massey (born 1957), is also a jazz musician.

Wilton “Bogey” Gaynair (11 January 1927 – 13 February 1995) was a Jamaican-born jazz musician, whose primary instrument was the tenor saxophone. “Blue Bogey”, “Kingston Bypass” “Debra”, and “Wilton Mood” are among his better known songs.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Gaynair was raised at Kingston’s Alpha Boys School, where fellow Jamaican musicians Joe Harriott, Harold McNair and Don Drummond were also pupils of a similar age.

Gaynair began his professional career playing in the clubs of Kingston, backing such visitors as George Shearing and Carmen McRae, before travelling to Europe in 1955, deciding to base himself in Germany because of the plentiful live work on offer. He recorded very seldom, only three times as a bandleader. Two of those recordings came during visits to England, 1959’s Blue Bogey (1959) on Tempo Records and Africa Calling (1960), also recorded for Tempo but unreleased until 2005 on account of that label’s demise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8fxRQWDz0Q

Mike Stern (born January 10, 1953) is an American jazz guitarist. After playing with Blood, Sweat & Tears, he worked with drummer Billy Cobham, then with trumpeter Miles Davis from 1981 to 1983 and again in 1985. He then began a solo career, releasing more than a dozen albums.

Stern was named Best Jazz Guitarist of 1993 by Guitar Player magazine. At the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal in June 2007, he was given the Miles Davis Award, which was created to recognize internationally acclaimed jazz artists whose work has contributed significantly to the renewal of the genre. In 2009 Stern was listed on Down Beat‘s list of 75 best jazz guitarists of all time. He received Guitar Player magazine’s Certified Legend Award on January 21, 2012.

Stern was born Michael Sedgwick in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Helen Stern (née Helen Phillips Burroughs), a sculptor and art patron, and Henry Dwight Sedgwick V. His adoptive stepfather was Philip M. Stern, the son of businessman Edgar B. Stern Sr and philanthropist Edith Rosenwald Stern, and grandson of philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. His sister Holly is the mother of actor Philip Nozuka and singers George Nozuka, Justin Nozuka and Henry Nozuka. His other (half-)sister is actress Kyra Sedgwick. Stern is married to guitarist and vocalist Leni Stern.