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Sh2 -261 , also sometimes known as the Lower Nebula , is avisible emission nebula in the constellation of Orion .

It is located in the northernmost part of the constellation, about 6 ° west of Alhena (γ Geminorum); it is easily visible in long exposure photos taken even with medium power amateur instruments. It lies in the clear trail of the Milky Way in opposition to the galactic centerand is surrounded by rich background star fields. The best period for its observation in the evening sky falls in the months between January and May, and although it is located in the northern celestial hemisphere , it can be observed from all populated areas of the Earth.

NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, but also one of the dustiest. Dubbed the Silver Coin for its appearance in smalltelescopes, it is more formally known as the Sculptor Galaxy for its location within the boundaries of the southern constellation Sculptor. Discovered in 1783 by mathematician and astronomer Caroline Herschel, the dusty island universe lies a mere 10 million light-years away. About 70 thousand light-years across, NGC 253, pictured, is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest to our own Local Group of galaxies. In addition to its spiral dust lanes, tendrils of dust seem to be rising from a galactic disk laced with young star clusters and star forming regions in this sharp color image. The high dust content accompanies frantic star formation, earning NGC 253 the designation of a starburst galaxy. NGC 253 is also known to be a strong source of high-energy x-rays and gamma rays, likely due to massive black holes near the galaxy’s center. Take a trip through extragalactic space in this short video flyby of NGC 253.

Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, CBE (/ˈɑːrməˌtreɪdɪŋ/, born 9 December 1950) is a Kittitian-English singer-songwriter and guitarist. A three-time Grammy Award nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. She received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996.

In a recording career spanning nearly 50 years, Armatrading has released 20 studio albums, as well as several live albums and compilations.

Joan Armatrading, the third of six children, was born in 1950 in the town of Basseterre in what was then the British colony Saint Christopher and Nevis.Her father was a carpenter and her mother a housewife. When she was three years old, her parents moved with their two eldest boys to Birmingham in England, sending Joan to live with her grandmother on the Caribbean island of Antigua.^[6] In early 1958, at the age of seven, she joined her parents in Brookfields, then a district of Birmingham. (The area, now mostly demolished, has been absorbed into the district of Hockley.) Her father had played in a band in his youth, later forbidding his children from touching his guitar. At about the age of 14 Armatrading began writing songs by setting her own limericks to music on a piano that her mother had purchased as “a piece of furniture” Armatrading then began teaching herself guitar after her mother had bought her one that was worth £3 (equivalent to £59 in 2020) from a pawn shop in exchange for two prams.

Junior Wells (born Amos Wells Blakemore Jr., December 9, 1934 – January 15, 1998) was an American singer, harmonica player, and recording artist. He is best known for his signature song “Messin’ with the Kid” and his 1965 album Hoodoo Man Blues, described by the critic Bill Dahl as “one of the truly classic blues albums of the 1960s”. Wells himself categorized his music as rhythm and blues.

Wells performed and recorded with various notable blues musicians, including Muddy Waters, Earl Hooker, and Buddy Guy. He remained a fixture on the blues scene throughout his career and also crossed over to rock audiences while touring with the Rolling Stones. Not long before Wells died, the blues historian Gerard Herzhaft called him “one of the rare active survivors of the ‘golden age of the blues'”.

Wells may have been born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in West Memphis, Arkansas (some sources report that he was born in West Memphis). Initially taught by his cousin Junior Parker and by Sonny Boy Williamson II, Wells learned to play the harmonica skillfully by the age of seven.

He moved to Chicago in 1948 with his mother, after her divorce, and began sitting in with local musicians at house parties and taverns. Wild and rebellious but needing an outlet for his talents, he began performing with the Aces, consisting of the brothers Dave and Louis Myers on guitars and the drummer Fred Below, with whom he developed a modern amplified harmonica style influenced by Little Walter. In 1952, he made his first recordings when he replaced Little Walter in Muddy Waters’s band and played on one of Waters’s sessions for Chess Records in 1952. His first recordings as a bandleader were made in the following year for States Records. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he recorded singles for Chief Records and its subsidiary, Profile Records, including “Messin’ with the Kid“, “Come on in This House”, and “It Hurts Me Too“, which would remain in his repertoire throughout his career. His 1960 Profile single “Little by Little” (written by Chief owner and producer Mel London) reached number 23 on the Billboard R&B chart, the first of his two singles to enter the chart.

The Andromeda Galaxy (IPA: /ænˈdrɒmɪdə/), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224 and originally the Andromeda Nebula (see below), is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years (770 kiloparsecs) from Earth and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. The galaxy’s name stems from the area of Earth’s sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which itself is named after the Ethiopian (or Phoenician) princess who was the wife of Perseus in Greek mythology.

James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American singer, poet and songwriter who was the lead vocalist of the rockband the Doors. Due to his wild personality, poetic lyrics, distinctive voice, unpredictable and erratic performances, and the dramatic circumstances surrounding his life and early death, Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock history. Since his death, his fame has endured as one of popular culture’s most rebellious and oft-displayed icons, representing the generation gap and youth counterculture.

Together with pianist Ray Manzarek, Morrison co-founded the Doors in 1965 in Venice, California. The group spent two years in obscurity until shooting to prominence with their number-one single in the United States, “Light My Fire“, taken from their self-titled debut album. Morrison recorded a total of six studio albums with the Doors, all of which sold well and received critical acclaim. Morrison was well known for improvising spoken wordpoetry passages while the band played live. Manzarek said Morrison “embodied hippie counterculture rebellion”.

Morrison developed an alcohol dependency throughout the band’s career, which at times affected his performances on stage. In 1971, Morrison died unexpectedly in Paris at the age of 27, amid conflicting witness reports. His premature death made him a member of the infamous 27 club. Since no autopsy was performed, the cause of Morrison’s death remains disputed. Although the Doors recorded two more albums after Morrison died, his death severely affected the band’s fortunes, and they split up two years later. In 2011, a Rolling Stone readers’ pick placed Jim Morrison in fifth place of the magazine’s “Best Lead Singers of All Time”. In another Rolling Stone list, entitled “The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time”, he was ranked 47th. He was also ranked number 22 on Classic Rock magazine’s “50 Greatest Singers in Rock”. In 1993, Morrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Doors.

Morrison was born in late 1943 in Melbourne, Florida, to Clara Virginia (née Clarke) and Lt.(j.g.) George Stephen Morrison, a future rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. His ancestors were Scottish, Irish, and English. Admiral Morrison commanded U.S. naval forces during the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, which provided the pretext for the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam Warin 1965. Morrison had a younger sister, Anne Robin (born 1947 in Albuquerque, New Mexico), and a younger brother, Andrew Lee Morrison (born 1948 in Los Altos, California).

In 1947, when he was three to four years old, Morrison allegedly witnessed a car accident in the desert, during which a truck overturned and some American Indians were lying injured at the side of the road. He referred to this incident in the Doors’ song “Peace Frog” on their 1970 album Morrison Hotel, as well as in the spoken word performances “Dawn’s Highway” and “Ghost Song” on the posthumous 1978 album An American Prayer. Morrison believed this incident to be the most formative event of his life, and made repeated references to it in the imagery in his songs, poems, and interviews.

Cleopatra Brown (December 8, 1907 or 1909 – April 15, 1995), known as Cleo Brown, C. Patra Brown or Cleo Patra Brown, was an American blues and jazz vocalist and pianist. She was the first woman instrumentalist to receive the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship.

While Brown’s place of birth has been published as Meridian, Mississippi, Brown told W. Balliett in a 1986 interview published in The New Yorker that she was born in De Kalb, Mississippi shortly before her father took a position as a pastor in Meridian. She played piano in the Baptist church as a child. In 1919 her family moved to Chicago, and she began learning piano from her brother who worked with “Pine Top” Smith, playing boogie-woogie for dances. From around 1923 she worked in vaudeville, as well as taking gigs in clubs. In 1935, she replaced Fats Waller as pianist on New York radio station WABC.

From the 1930s to the 1950s she toured the United States regularly, recording for Decca Records (among other labels) along the way and recording many humorous, ironic titles such as “Breakin’ in a New Pair of Shoes”, “Mama Don’t Want No Peas and Rice and Coconut Oil“, “When Hollywood Goes Black and Tan”, and “The Stuff Is Here and It’s Mellow”. Her stride piano playing was often compared to Fats Waller, and she is credited as an influence on Dave Brubeck, who played during the intermissions of her shows, and Marian McPartland. She played regularly at clubs in Chicago, toured widely, and recorded for both Decca and Capitol Records.

Brown began to shy away from singing bawdy blues songs because of her deepening religious beliefs and, in 1953, she was baptized, retired from music, and became a nurse in 1959. Jazz biographies frequently listed her as deceased due to her absence from music. The song “Sweet Cleo Brown” was recorded by Brubeck in tribute to her.

From the mid-1970s until 1981, she performed under the name of C. Patra Brown on radio shows in Denver, Colorado. She replaced boogie-woogie music with slower, inspirational music. She returned to record again, and performed on National Public Radio. She gave birth to a son, Matthew, and had four grandchildren. She died on April 15, 1995 in Denver, Colorado.