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I think one of President Trump's early priorities should be the acknowledgement of the his predecessors. Several Important Facilities and appropriate names leap to mind. Joseph Biden Center For Political DiscourseHillary Clinton Environmental CenterJohn F. Kerry Middle Eastern Politics CenterRod Blagojevich Government Employee Retirement CenterLynch-Comey Bureau Of Government EthicsBarack Hussein Obama Center For Concern For The PeopleThe Kennedy Family Memorial School For Driving And Flying At Groton, Connecticut

After Man Held This Gun, His Hands Were Trembling. Heres Why.It sounds like a clickbait title, but it's worth the click. Good Lord.

Lutetia: The Largest Asteroid Yet Visited Credit: ESA, NASA, JAXA; Montage: Emily Lakdawalla (Planetary Society) Explanation: As humans explore the universe, the record for largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft has increased yet again. Earlier this month, ESA's robotic Rosetta spacecraft zipped past the asteroid 21 Lutetia taking data and snapping images in an effort to better determine the history of the asteroid and the origin of its unusual colors. Although of unknown composition, Lutetia is not massive enough for gravity to pull it into a sphere. Pictured above on the upper right, the 100-kilometer across Lutetia is shown...

Masons found a full set of silver Masonic jewels stashed in the attic of Corinthian Lodge AF&AM in Concord, Massachusetts. The link goes to a news video. They say the set is handmade and 200 years old. The jewels are worn by the various officers of each lodge. They are literally a badge of office. Paul Revere was the orginal Master of Corinthian Lodge, and, of course, a silversmith. If these were made by him, they would be quite a treasure. Mystery Mason 'Jewels' Made By Revere?

Diamond Ring and Shadow Bands Credit & Copyright: Stephen Schneider (UMass Astronomy Dept.) Explanation: As the total phase of July 11's solar eclipse came to an end, sunlight streaming past the edge of the Moon's silhouette created the fleeting appearance of a glistening diamond ring in the sky. Seen through a thin cloud layer from the French Polynesian atoll of Hao it also produced remarkable shadow bands, flickering across the dramatic scene. Projected onto the cloud layer, the shadow bands are parallel to the sliver of sunlight emerging from behind the Moon's edge. Caused by turbulence in Earth's atmosphere...

Messier 76 Credit & Copyright: Ken Crawford (Rancho Del Sol Obs.) Explanation: "Nebula at the right foot of Andromeda ... " begins the description for the 76th object in Charles Messier's 18th century Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters. In fact, M76 is one of the fainter objects on the Messier list and is also known by the popular name of the "Little Dumbbell Nebula". Like its brighter namesake M27 (the Dumbbell Nebula), M76 is recognized as a planetary nebula - a gaseous shroud cast off by a dying sunlike star. The nebula itself is thought to be shaped...

The Meteor of 1860 by Frederic Church Courtesy: Judith Filenbaum Hernstadt (painting photographed by Gerald L. Carr) Explanation: Frederic Church (1826-1900), American landscape painter of the Hudson River School, painted what he saw in nature. And on July 20th, 1860, he saw a spectacular string of fireball meteors cross the Catskill evening sky, an extremely rare Earth-grazing meteor procession. From New York City, poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) also wrote of the "... strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads" in his poem Year of Meteors (1859-60). But the inspiration for Whitman's words was forgotten. His...

The Crown of the Sun Credit & Copyright: Alain Maury, Jean-Luc Dauvergne Explanation: During a total solar eclipse, the Sun's extensive outer atmosphere, or corona, is an inspirational sight. Subtle shades and shimmering features that engage the eye span a brightness range of over 10,000 to 1, making them notoriously difficult to capture in a single photograph. But this composite of 7 consecutive digital images over a range of exposure times comes close to revealing the crown of the Sun in all its glory. The telescopic views were recorded from the Isla de Pascua (Easter Island) during July 11's...

The Antennae Galaxies in Collision Credit: NASA, ESA & B. Whitmore (STScI) et al.; Image processing: Davide De Martin Explanation: Two galaxies are squaring off in Corvus and here are the latest pictures. But when two galaxies collide, the stars that compose them usually do not. That's because galaxies are mostly empty space and, however bright, stars only take up only a small amount of that space. During the slow, hundred million year collision, one galaxy can still rip the other apart gravitationally, and dust and gas common to both galaxies does collide. In this clash of the titans,...

Galaxies in the River Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh Explanation: Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy practices galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that get too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus (The River). Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531, a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually...

Shaping NGC 6188 Credit & Copyright: Piotrek Sadowski Explanation: Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away. Formed in that region only a few million years ago, the massive young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association sculpt the fantastic shapes and power the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The recent star formation itself was likely triggered by winds and supernova explosions,...

Andes Sunset Eclipse Credit & Copyright: Janne Pyykkö Explanation: On July 11, after a long trek eastward across the southern Pacific Ocean, the Moon's shadow reached landfall in South America. In a total solar eclipse close to sunset, silhouetted Moon and Sun hugged the western horizon, seen here above the Andes mountains near the continent's southern tip. To enjoy a good vantage point, the photographer hiked to a windy spot about 400 meters above a lake, Lago Argentino, climbing into the picture after setting up his camera on a tripod. At left, the sky outside the shadow cone is...

Easter Island Eclipse Credit & Copyright: Stéphane Guisard (Los Cielos de America), TWAN Explanation: Makemake, a god in Easter Island mythology, may have smiled for a moment as clouds parted long enough to reveal this glimpse of July 11's total solar eclipse to skygazers. In the foreground of the dramatic scene, the island's famous large, monolithic statues (Moai) share a beachside view of the shimmering solar corona and the darkened daytime sky. Other opportunities to see the total phase of this eclipse of the Sun were also hard to come by. Defined by the dark part of the Moon's...

Moons Beyond the Rings of Saturn Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA Explanation: What's happened to that moon of Saturn? Nothing -- Saturn's moon Rhea is just partly hidden behind Saturn's rings. In April, the robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn took this narrow-angle view looking across the Solar System's most famous rings. Rings visible in the foreground include the thin F ring on the outside and the much wider A and B rings just interior to it. Although it seems to be hovering over the rings, Saturn's moon Janus is actually far behind them. Janus is...

Ecliptic New Zealand Image Credit & Copyright: Tunç Tezel (TWAN) Explanation: Four bright celestial beacons and a faint triangle of light follow the plane of the ecliptic as it arcs high through this southern hemisphere night skyscape. Seen on a July winter night from Lake Taupo on New Zealand's North Island, the line-up features Venus, Regulus (alpha star of Leo), Mars, and Saturn from lower left to upper right. Just put your cursor over the picture to identify the planets and constellations. The delicate luminous glow of Zodiacal Light, sunlight scattered by dust along the ecliptic, also rises above...

Microwave Milky Way Credit: ESA, Planck HFI & LFI Consortia Explanation: Seen from our edge-on perspective, the Milky Way Galaxy sprawls across the middle of this false-color, all sky view. The expansive microwave map is based on 1 year's worth of data from instruments onboard the sky-surveying Planck spacecraft. Remarkably, the bright stripe of gas and dust clouds along the galactic plane and the galaxy's enormous arcing structures seen at microwave energies are hundreds or thousands of light-years away, while the mottled regions at the top and bottom represent the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, some 13.7 billion light-years...

Dim World, Dark Nebula Credit & Copyright: Ray Gralak Explanation: Dim, distant, dwarf planet Pluto can be hard to spot, especially in recent months as it wanders through the crowded starfields of Sagittarius and the central Milky Way. But fortunately for backyard Pluto hunters, it crossed in front of a dark nebula in early July. The diminutive world is marked with two short lines near the center of this skyscape recorded from New Mexico Skies on July 5. Pluto stands out only because obscuring dark nebula Barnard 92 (B92) blocks the background of the Milky Way's congeries of faint,...

HCG 87: A Small Group of Galaxies Credit: Sally Hunsberger (Lowell Obs.), Jane Charlton (Penn State) et al.; Data: Hubble Legacy Archive; Processing: Robert Gendler Explanation: Sometimes galaxies form groups. For example, our own Milky Way Galaxy is part of the Local Group of Galaxies. Small, compact groups, like Hickson Compact Group 87 (HCG 87) shown above, are interesting partly because they slowly self-destruct. Indeed, the galaxies of HCG 87 are gravitationally stretching each other during their 100-million year orbits around a common center. The pulling creates colliding gas that causes bright bursts of star formation and feeds matter...

The Milky Way Over Pulpit Rock Credit & Copyright: Alex Cherney (Terrastro) Explanation: Can a picture of the sky be relaxing? A candidate for such a picture might be the above image taken only last month from Cape Schank, Victoria, Australia. The frame is highlighted by a quiet lagoon, soft ground fog, two galaxies, and tens of thousands of stars. The rock cropping on the left may appear from this angle like a human head, but the more famous rock structure is on the far right and known as Pulpit Rock. Across the top of the image runs a...

DELRAY BEACH (Florida)— A clerk armed with a gun fatally shot an armed robber at a Delray Beach convenience store Saturday evening, police said. Authorities have not yet identified the participants. According to Delray Beach police, the incident began just before 10 p.m. at the Community Food Market at 139 NW Fifth Avenue. Clerks told police that a man armed with a semiautomatic handgun entered the store and tried to rob them. One of the clerks hid behind the counter and the man fired at him. Another clerk took a weapon and shot back at the robber, police said. The...