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These two galaxies are far far away, 12 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Great Bear. On the left, with grand spiral arms and bright yellow core is spiral galaxy M81, some 100,000 light-years across. On the right marked by red gas and dust clouds, is irregular galaxy M82. The pair have been locked in gravitational combat for a billion years. Gravity from each galaxy has profoundly affected the other during a series of cosmic close encounters. Their last go-round lasted about 100 million years and likely raised density waves rippling around M81, resulting in the richness of M81‘s spiral arms. M82 was left with violent star forming regions and colliding gas clouds so energetic the galaxy glows in X-rays. In the next few billion years, their continuing gravitational encounters will result in a merger, and a single galaxy will remain.

Assala Mostafa Hatem Nasri (Arabic: أصالة مصطفى حاتم نصري‎; born 15 May 1969), commonly known as Assala Nasri (Arabic: أصالة نصري‎) and by the mononym Assala (Arabic: أصالة‎), is a Syrian musical artist.

Assala was born in Damascus, Syria to a middle class couple. Mostafa Nasri, Assala’s father, was a revered composer and singer. Assala began her musical career by performing patriotic, religious, and children’s songs when she was four years old. She sang the theme song “Qessas Al Sho’oub” (قصص الشعوب), of the cartoon show, Hekayat Alamiyah (حكايات عالمية). In 1984, Mostafa Nasri died after suffering from internal bleeding caused by a car accident. Aged 15 she helped to take care of her siblings Aman, Ayham, Reem and Anas with her mother Aziza Al-Babelli.

Assala’s commercial musical career debuted in 1991 with the Egyptian song hit Law Ta’rafou (Egyptian Arabic: لو تعرفو). The album had 4 Egyptian songs in the oriental operatic Classic Egyptian tarab style. The album was an instant hit in Egypt back at that time with heartbreaking songs like “Ya Sabra Yana” and “Samehtak Ketir”. She quickly cemented her presence in the Arabic world a growing industry brimming with singers like Angham, Najwa Karam, Latifa, and Abdelmajeed Abdullah.

Michael Gordon Oldfield (born 15 May 1953) is an English multi-instrumentalist and composer. His work blends progressive rock with world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient, and new-age music. His biggest commercial success is the 1973 album Tubular Bells – which launched Virgin Records and became a hit in America after its opening was used as the theme for the horror film The Exorcist. He recorded the 1983 hit single “Moonlight Shadow“ and a rendition of the Christmas piece “In Dulci Jubilo“.

Oldfield has released 26 albums, most recently a sequel to his 1975 album Ommadawn titled Return to Ommadawn, on 20 January 2017.

Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, RDI (/ˈiːnoʊ/; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is an English musician, record producer, visual artist, and theorist best known for his pioneering work in ambient music and contributions to rock, pop and electronica. A self-described “non-musician”, Eno has helped introduce unique conceptual approaches and recording techniques to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music‘s most influential and innovative figures.

Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at the art school of Ipswich Civic College in the mid 1960s, and then at Winchester School of Art. He joined glam rock group Roxy Music as synthesizer player in 1971, recording two albums with the group but departing in 1973 amidst tensions with Roxy frontman Bryan Ferry. Eno went on to record a number of solo albums beginning with Here Come the Warm Jets (1974). In the mid-1970s, he began exploring a minimalist direction on releases such as Discreet Music (1975) and Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978), coining the term “ambient music” with the latter.

Alongside his solo work, Eno collaborated frequently with other musicians in the 1970s, including Robert Fripp, Harmonia, Cluster, Harold Budd, David Bowie, and David Byrne. He also established himself as a sought-after producer, working on albums by John Cale, Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Talking Heads, Ultravox, and Devo, as well as the no wave compilation No New York (1978). In subsequent decades, Eno continued to record solo albums and produce for other artists, mostly prominently U2 and Coldplay, alongside work with artists such as Daniel Lanois, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, Slowdive, James Blake, Karl Hyde, Kevin Shields, and Damon Albarn.

Dating back to his time as a student, Eno has also worked in other media, including sound installations, film, and writing. In the mid-1970s, he co-developed Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking. From the 1970s onwards, Eno’s installations have included the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in 2016. An advocate of a range of humanitarian causes, Eno writes on a variety of subjects and is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation. In 2019, Eno was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.

Ellis Larkins (May 15, 1923 – September 30, 2002) was an American jazz pianist born in Baltimore, Maryland, perhaps best known for his two recordings with Ella Fitzgerald: the albums Ella Sings Gershwin (1950) and Songs in a Mellow Mood (1954). He was also the leader in the first solo sides by singer Chris Connor on her album Chris (1954).

Larkins was the first African American to attend the Peabody Conservatory of Music, a well-known institute in Baltimore. He began his professional playing career in New York City after moving there to attend the Juilliard School. Following school Larkins performed jazz piano with Billy Moore and Edmond Hall. He recorded with Coleman Hawkins, Mildred Bailey, and Dicky Wells in the 1940s. In the 1950s he recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Braff, and Beverly Kenney. His 1960s work included recordings or performances with Eartha Kitt, Joe Williams, Helen Humes, Georgia Gibbs and Harry Belafonte.

Alegrías (Spanish pronunciation: [aleˈɣɾi.as]) is a flamenco palo or musical form, which has a rhythm consisting of 12 beats. It is similar to Soleares. Its beat emphasis is as follows: 1 2 [3] 4 5 [6] 7 [8]9 [10] 11 [12]. Alegrías originated in Cádiz. Alegrías belongs to the group of palos called Cantiñas and it is usually played in a lively rhythm (120-170 beats per minute). The livelier speeds are chosen for dancing, while quieter rhythms are preferred for the song alone.

One of the structurally strictest forms of flamenco, a traditional dance in alegrías must contain each of the following sections: a salida (entrance), paseo (walkaround), silencio (similar to an adagio in ballet), castellana (upbeat section) zapateado (Literally “a tap of the foot”) and bulerías. This structure though, is not followed when alegrías are sung as a standalone song (with no dancing). In that case, the stanzas are combined freely, sometimes together with other types of cantiñas.

Three Black Holes with two at only 650 light-years apart, the pair is the closest supermassive black hole duo known. The existence of the third black hole means this cosmic collision may proceed faster than previously thought, in a few million (rather than a few hundred million) years.

By measuring the speeds of stars whirling around each black hole, Kollatschny’s team estimates that the northern black hole has 400 million Suns’ worth of mass; the southern duo has 700 million and 90 million solar masses, respectively. The whole trio is contained within a volume less than 3,000 light-years across.

“Such a concentration of three supermassive black holes has so far never been discovered in the universe,” says coauthor Peter Weilbacher (Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, Germany).

NGC 6240’s fluffy appearance has long been assumed to come from the collision of multiple galaxies, but the existence of a third supermassive black hole in its center suggests it was three galaxies that came together. Light from the galactic collision took 340 million years to travel to Earth so, astronomically speaking, it’s relatively nearby. Kollatschny and colleagues note that there are very few other galactic crashes at this stage of evolution, and theoretical calculations have shown that such multiple mergers should be rare in the present-day universe. 400Mly

David Byrne (/bɜːrn/; born 14 May 1952) is a British-American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, artist, actor, writer, music theorist, and filmmaker who is a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads.

Byrne has released solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography, opera, fiction, and non-fiction. He has received Academy, Grammy, and Golden Globe Awards, and he is an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

David Byrne (/bɜːrn/; born 14 May 1952) is a British-American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, artist, actor, writer, music theorist, and filmmaker who is a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads.

Byrne has released solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography, opera, fiction, and non-fiction. He has received Academy, Grammy, and Golden Globe Awards, and he is an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

John Symon Asher Bruce (14 May 1943 – 25 October 2014), known professionally as Jack Bruce, was a Scottish singer-songwriter, musician and composer. He gained popularity as the lead vocalist and bass guitarist of British rock band Cream. After the group disbanded in 1968, he pursued a solo career and also played with several bands.

In the early 1960s Bruce joined the Graham Bond Organisation, where he met his future bandmate Ginger Baker. After leaving the Graham Bond Organisation, he joined with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, where he met Eric Clapton, who also was his future bandmate. His time with the band was brief. In 1966, he formed Cream with lead guitarist Clapton and drummer Baker; he co-wrote some of their hits (including “Sunshine of Your Love“, “White Room” and “I Feel Free“) with songwriter Pete Brown. After the group disbanded Bruce formed his own blues-rock band West, Bruce and Laing in 1972, with guitarist Leslie West and drummer Corky Laing. In the late 1960s he began recording solo albums. His first solo album, Songs for a Tailor, released in 1969, was a worldwide hit. His solo career spanned several decades. From the 1970s to the 1990s he played with several groups as a touring member. He reunited with Cream in 2005 for concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Bruce is considered to be one of the most important and influential bass guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone magazine readers ranked him number eight on their list of “10 Greatest Bass Guitarist Of All Time”. He was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, and was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, both as a member of Cream.

His first marriage was with Janet Godfrey in 1964, with whom he had two sons, Jonas and Malcolm. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1981. His second marriage was with Margret Seyfer in 1982, with whom he had two daughters Natascha, Kyla and a son named Corin. He died of liver disease on 25 October 2014 in England, aged 71. At the time of his death he had a net worth of 20 million dollars.

Warren Smith (born May 14, 1934) is an American jazz drummer and percussionist, known as a contributor to Max Roach‘s M’boom ensemble and leader of the Composer’s Workshop Ensemble (Strata-East).

Smith was born May 14, 1934, in Chicago, Illinois, to a musical family. His father played saxophone and clarinet with Noble Sissle and Jimmie Noone, and his mother was a harpist and pianist. At the age of four Smith studied clarinet with his father. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1957, then received a master’s degree in percussion from the Manhattan School of Music in 1958.

One of his earliest major recording dates was with Miles Davis as a vibraphonist in 1957. He found work in Broadway pit bands in 1958, and also played with Gil Evans that year. In 1961 he co-founded the Composers Workshop Ensemble. In the 1960s Smith accompanied Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Lloyd Price, and Nat King Cole; he worked with Sam Rivers from 1964–76 and with Gil Evans again from 1968 to 1976. In 1969 he played with Janis Joplin and in 1971 with King Curtis and Tony Williams. He was also a founding member of Max Roach‘s percussion ensemble, M’Boom, in 1970.

In the 1970s and 1980s Smith had a loft called Studio Wis that acted as a performing and recording space for many young New York jazz musicians, such as Wadada Leo Smith and Oliver Lake. Through the 1970s Smith played with Andrew White, Julius Hemphill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Nancy Wilson, Quincy Jones, Count Basie, and Carmen McRae. Other credits include extensive work with rock and pop musicians and time spent with Anthony Braxton, Charles Mingus, Henry Threadgill, Van Morrison, and Joe Zawinul. He continued to work on Broadway into the 1990s, and has performed with a number of classical ensembles.

Arthur James “Zutty” Singleton (May 14, 1898 – July 14, 1975) was an American jazz drummer.

Singleton was born in Bunkie, Louisiana, and raised in New Orleans. According to his Jazz Profiles biography:

His unusual nickname, acquired in infancy, is the Creole word for “cute.”

He was working professionally with Steve Lewis by 1915. He served with the United States Navy in World War I. After returning to New Orleans he worked with such bands as those of Papa Celestin, Big Eye Louis Nelson, John Robichaux, and Fate Marable. He left for St. Louis, Missouri, to play in Charlie Creath‘s band, then moved to Chicago.

In Chicago, Singleton played with Doc Cook, Dave Peyton, Jimmie Noone, and theater bands, then joined Louis Armstrong‘s band with Earl Hines. In 1928 and 1929, he performed on landmark recordings with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five. In 1929 he moved with Armstrong to New York City.

In addition to Armstrong, in New York Singleton played with Bubber Miley, Tommy Ladnier, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton and Otto Hardwick. He also played in the band backing Bill Robinson. In 1934, Singleton returned to Chicago. He returned to New York in 1937, working with Mezz Mezzrow and Sidney Bechet.

The British thriller writer, Eric Ambler, author of A Coffin for Dimitrios, and other novels, saw Singleton perform in New York in 1939 and became an instant fan. In his autobiography, Here Lies, Ambler mentions getting an autographed photo of the drummer, which he prized.

In 1943, he moved to Los Angeles, where he led his own band, played for motion pictures, and was featured on Orson Welles‘s CBS Radio series, The Orson Welles Almanac (1944). Later he worked with such jazz musicians as Slim Gaillard, Wingy Manone,Eddie Condon, Nappy Lamare, Art Hodes, Oran “Hot Lips” Page, and Max Kaminsky.

This spectacular color panorama of the center the Orion nebula is one of the largest pictures ever assembled from individual images taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The picture, seamlessly composited from a mosaic of 15 separate fields, covers an area of sky about five percent the area covered by the full Moon.

The seemingly infinite tapestry of rich detail revealed by Hubble shows a churning turbulent star factory set within a maelstrom of flowing, luminescent gas. Though this 2.5 light-years wide view is still a small portion of the entire nebula, it includes almost all of the light from the bright glowing clouds of gas and a star cluster associated with the nebula. Hubble reveals details as small as 4.1 billion miles across.

Hubble Space Telescope observing time was devoted to making this panorama because the nebula is a vast laboratory for studying the processes which gave birth to our own Sun and solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Many of the nebula’s details can’t be captured in a single picture – any more than one snapshot of the Grand Canyon yields clues to its formation and history. Like the Grand Canyon, the Orion nebula has a dramatic surface topography – of glowing gasses instead of rock – with peaks, valleys and walls. They are illuminated and heated by a torrent of energetic ultraviolet light from its four hottest and most massive stars, called the Trapezium, which lie near the center of the image.

In addition to the Trapezium, this stellar cavern contains 700 hundred other young stars at various stages of formation. High-speed jets of hot gas spewed by some of the infant stars send supersonic shock waves tearing into the nebula at 100,000 miles per hour. These shock waves appear as thin curved loops, sometimes with bright knots on their end (the brightest examples are near the bright star at the lower left).

Stevland Hardaway Morris (né Judkins; born May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. A prominent figure in popular music, he is one of the most successful songwriters and musicians in the history of music.Through his heavy use of electronic instruments and innovative sounds, Wonder became a pioneer and influence to musicians of various genres including pop, rhythm and blues, soul, funk and rock.

Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy known as Little Stevie Wonder, leading him to sign with Motown‘s Tamla label at the age of 11. In 1963, the single “Fingertips” was a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 when Wonder was aged 13, making him the youngest artist ever to top the chart. Wonder’s critical success was at its peak in the 1970s when he started his “classic period” in 1972 with the releases of Music of My Mind and Talking Book, with the latter featuring the number-one hit “Superstition“. “Superstition” is one of the most distinctive and famous examples of the sound of the Hohner Clavinet keyboard. With Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974) and Songs in the Key of Life(1976) all winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, Wonder became the tied record holder, with Frank Sinatra, for the most Album of the Year wins with three. Wonder is also the only artist to have won the award with three consecutive album releases.

Wonder’s “classic period”, which is widely considered to have ended in 1977, was noted for his funky keyboard style, personal control of production, and series of songs integrated with one another to make a concept album. In 1979, Wonder made use of the early music sampler Computer Music Melodian through his composition of the soundtrack album Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through “The Secret Life of Plants”. It was also his first digital recording, and one of the earliest popular albums to use the technology, which Wonder used for all subsequent recordings. Wonder’s 1970s albums are regarded as very influential; the Rolling Stone Record Guide (1983) wrote they “pioneered stylistic approaches that helped to determine the shape of pop music for the next decade”.

Wonder has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has won 25 Grammy Awards, making him one of the most awarded artists of all time. He was the first Motown artist and second African-American musician to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song, for the 1984 film The Woman in Red. Wonder has been inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, Rock and Rock Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame, and has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.‘s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, he was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

Wonder was born Stevland Hardaway Judkins in Saginaw, Michigan, on May 13, 1950, the third of six children born to Calvin Judkins and songwriter Lula Mae Hardaway. He was born six weeks premature which, along with the oxygen-rich atmosphere in the hospital incubator, resulted in retinopathy of prematurity, a condition in which the growth of the eyes is aborted and causes the retinas to detach, so he became blind.

When Wonder was four, his mother divorced his father and moved with her children to Detroit, Michigan, where Wonder sang as a child in a choir at the Whitestone Baptist Church. She changed her name back to Lula Hardaway and later changed her son’s surname to Morris, partly because of relatives. Wonder has retained Morris as his legal surname. He began playing instruments at an early age, including piano, harmonica, and drums. He formed a singing partnership with a friend; calling themselves Stevie and John, they played on street corners and occasionally at parties and dances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPFB-z2ezXk

William McKinley “Red” Garland, Jr. (May 13, 1923 – April 23, 1984) was an American modern jazz pianist. Known for his work as a bandleader and during the 1950s with Miles Davis, Garland helped popularize the block chord style of piano playing.

William “Red” Garland was born in 1923 in Dallas, Texas. He began his musical studies on the clarinet and alto saxophone but, in 1941, switched to the piano. Less than five years later, Garland joined the trumpet player Hot Lips Page, well-known in the southwest, playing with him until a tour ended in New York in March 1946. With Garland having decided to stay in New York to find work, Art Blakey came across Garland playing at a small club, only to return the next night with Blakey’s boss, Billy Eckstine.

Garland also had a short-lived career as a welterweight boxer in the 1940s. He fought more than 35 fights, one being an exhibition bout with Sugar Ray Robinson.

Garland became famous in 1954 when he joined the Miles Davis Quintet, featuring John Coltrane, Philly Joe Jones, and Paul Chambers. Davis was a fan of boxing and was impressed that Garland had boxed earlier in his life. Together, the group recorded their famous Prestige albums, Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet (1954), Workin, Steamin’, Cookin’, and Relaxin’. Garland’s style is prominent in these seminal recordings—evident in his distinctive chord voicings, his sophisticated accompaniment, and his musical references to Ahmad Jamal‘s style. Some observers dismissed Garland as a “cocktail” pianist, but Miles was pleased with his style, having urged Garland to absorb some of Jamal’s lightness of touch and harmonics within his own approach.