I just got back from a week’s vacation in sunnier climes and was surprised to see one of my rose gardens still blooming after a snowstorm and some chilly rain while I was gone. We’ve had something of a mild autumn this year in New England, and some flower gardens are still glowing madly away, basking in the last warm weather before the snows start in earnest. This little tub of roses is dedicated to the memory of Caroline Robinson, late wife of Leif Robinson — a former colleague of mine from Sky Publishing. She loved to garden, and when I was planting these little Canadian roses earlier this year, I thought of her and her fight against cancer. A few weeks ago we attended Caroline’s memorial service and I thought about these roses out there, still blooming this late in the year.

Another set of blooms arrived in my computer’s inbox today — this set from the European Southern Observatory. These roses are really giant clouds of glowing hydrogen gas coloring the space in the Large Magellanic Cloud — a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. This European Southern Observatory image captures the beautiful sight of a 1,000 light-year-wide HII region (consisting of hydrogen gas being lit by radiation from 40 very bright bluish-colored stars) called N44. Astronomers studying this cloud think that some supernovae have exploded in N44 during the past few million years, “sweeping” the surrounding gas away from the supernova sites. Hot stellar winds from other massive stars in this area are blowing bubbles in the surrounding gases, twisting the material into wispy filaments and bright knots.

A small programming note: regular readers of this blog may notice that I’m fiddling around with the layout and template design. I hope to be through messing around with it soon but I do appreciate your patience while I figure out what I’m doing!

Also, have a look over at the library and gift shop on my website. I’ve been adding some holiday gift ideas at the suggestion of several readers who have been writing to ask me about the perfect gift for that stargazer they know. I’ve got links to books, telescopes, binoculars, star charts, space music and many other items — some with links to Amazon.com (which itself has loads of details about these products as well). Happy browsing!