Apostle Saint James the Greater, brother of Saint John and one of the three who spent time with the Lord on significant occasions, was a fisherman called by Jesus to follow him. Most likely, he was the first to be martyred, and witness to the faith with his blood. He and Saint John were nicknamed “Sons of Thunder” by Jesus.
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Target: Galaxy NGC 3079 Mission: Instrument: Image Credit: NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute |
From left to right, NASA astronaut candidates Anil Menon, Deniz Burnham, and Marcos Berrios pose for a photograph in front of NASA’s Artemis I Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft at Launch Complex 39B at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 2, 2022.
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Saint Sharbel Makhlouf was a Lebanese Maronite Rite monk, one of the Eastern Catholic Churches who follow a slightly different liturgy and canon law. We in the Latin or Roman Rite often forget that we have sisters and brothers in the East. Saint Sharbel is a good reminder of the wider Church.
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Saint Bridget of Sweden was married, a mother of eight, and the foundress of a monastery for men and women. She spent her final days in Rome seeking to correct Church abuses for which she received much opposition.
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The Patrouille de France flying during an air show in Poland. This unit of the French Air Force traditionally opens the Bastille Day military parade in Paris each 14 July.
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Whether or not Saint Mary Magdalene was a notorious sinner—and she most likely was not—she was one of the women who traveled with Jesus and the Apostles, and was present at the cross. She also was the one chosen to bring the good news of the resurrection to the Apostles.
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The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 is interacting with a smaller galaxy to the upper left. The smaller galaxy has likely stripped gas from NGC 6872 to feed the supermassive black hole in its center.
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Target: Mars Mission: Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Instrument: Mastcam Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS |
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Target: Mars Mission: Mars 2020 Rover Instrument: Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DTU/QUT |
Unwilling to take no for an answer, Saint Apollinaris was exiled from Ravenna several times, but he always returned trying to preach the good news to the people. He finally died of a beating he received in a suburb of Ravenna.
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Saint Camillus de Lellis was rejected by the Capuchins because of an ongoing medical condition. Against the advice of a friend, he founded a religious community on his own to care for the sick. These men proved to be invaluable during the plague, caring for the worst of its victims.
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Target: Stephan’s Quintet,NGC 7319, NGC 7318B, NGC 7318A Mission: Instrument: Image Credit: NASA, Jayanne English (University of Manitoba), Sally Hunsberger (Pennsylvania State University), Zolt Levay (Space Telescope Science Institute), Sarah Gallagher (Pennsylvania State University), and Jane Charlton |
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, poses for a photo beside the U.S. flag that has been placed on the Moon at Tranquility Base during the Apollo 11 mission landing on July 20, 1969.
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Saint Francis Solano asked to be sent to Africa as a missionary. Instead he was sent to South America, where he spent the rest of his life. After years of ministry in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay, he died in the city of Lima, Peru.
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Reversible Railroad Accent Pillow – Perfect for any Train enthusiast. Two beautiful Currier and Ives Prints. Front: American railroad scene: lightning express trains leaving the junction Back: Across The Continent, an 1868 lithograph illustrating the westward expansion of American settlers and the transcontinental railroad. Railroad scene of a bustling train junction, two trains pulled by large black locomotives with smoke billowing from their stacks approach the lower left corner of the image, where their tracks appear to converge. Across The Continent, an 1868 lithograph illustrating the westward expansion of American settlers and the transcontinental railroad.
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The Blessed Virgin has many, many titles—among them is Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Mount Carmel is in northern Israel and has long been the site of a monastery of religious monks.
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Tornado simulation of a 1977 supercell thunderstorm and the high-intensity tornado it spawned. The simulation captured the tornado’s vortex structure with wind speeds of 260 miles-per-hour, classified as an F5 on the Fujita tornado intensity scale.
More about this Image
Ming …
This is an NSF Multimedia Gallery item.
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Brown booby (Sula leucogaster plotus) female feeding juvenile male on nest, Michaelmas Cay, Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia
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Painting of the NASA logo, also called the meatball, continued on the 525-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 29, 2020.
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Known as the Lily of the Mohawks, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha courageously converted to Catholicism at age 19 despite her family’s disapproval. She was ostracized and forced into extreme poverty. Escaping to Montreal, Kateri continued to live a life of prayer and penance.
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The distorted spiral galaxy at center, the Penguin, and the compact elliptical at left, the Egg, are locked in an active embrace. This near- and mid-infrared image combines data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), and marks the telescope’s second year of science. Webb’s view shows that their interaction is marked by a glow of scattered stars represented in blue. Known jointly as Arp 142, the galaxies made their first pass by one another between 25 and 75 million years ago, causing “fireworks,” or new star formation, in the Penguin. The galaxies are approximately the same mass, which is why one hasn’t consumed the other.
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Target: Globular cluster M4 Mission: Instrument: Image Credit: NASA and H. Richer (University of British Columbia), credit for ground-based photo: NOAO/AURA/NSF |
A Capuchin Poor Clare nun, Saint Veronica Giuliani received the unique gift of the stigmata of Christ. Few people have been blessed with these marks; Saint Francis of Assisi was probably the most notable among them.
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Exemplar of an adult dusky grouper (Epinephelus marginatus) of about 150 centimetres (59 in) length and 60 kilograms (130 lb) heavy seen at a depth of about 25 metres (82 ft), Garajau Marine Nature Reserve, Madeira, Portugal
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The Artemis II Core Stage moves from final assembly to the VAB at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in preparation for delivery to Kennedy Spaceflight Center later this month. Image credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker
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Among the Chinese martyrs was the diocesan priest, Father Augustine Zhao Rong. Facing the strong anti-foreign and anti-Catholic feelings present in China for centuries, these martyrs were caught up in a situation that in many ways had nothing to do either with religion or with the Church. But they stayed loyal to Christianity and to their people, and gave their lives in witness.
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Franciscan friar Blessed Emmanuel Ruiz and his companions were tortured and killed for their faith in 1860. Little else is known about them, but the testimony of their lives speaks volumes.
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Saint Maria Goretti has captured the love and affection of thousands of people because of the simplicity and purity of her life.
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NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this image of Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean on July 1, 2024, while aboard the International Space Station, and posted it to X. The Category 4 hurricane had winds of about 130 mph (215 kph).
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Found among the rich starfields of the Milky Way,
star
cluster NGC 7789 lies about 8,000 light-years away
toward the constellation Cassiopeia
Glory be to the Father,
Who by His almighty power and love created me,
making me in the image and likeness of God.
Glory be to the Son,
Who by His Precious Blood delivered me from hell,
and opened for me the gates of heaven.
Glory be to the Holy Spirit,
Who has sanctified me in the sacrament of Baptism,
and continues to sanctify me
by the graces I receive daily from His bounty.
Glory be to the Three adorable Persons of the Holy Trinity,
now and forever.
Amen.
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Saint Elizabeth of Portugal did not have an easy time in spite of the fact that she was royalty. She spent her life seeking peace between herself and her unfaithful husband, and between many of her relatives. Elizabeth saw some progress in this endeavor before retiring to a Poor Clare monastery where she died.
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Target: Galaxy NGC 4622 Mission: Instrument: Image Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: Dr. Ron Buta (U. Alabama), Dr. Gene Byrd (U. Alabama) and Tarsh Freeman (Bevill State Comm. College) |
We don’t know a lot about Saint Thomas the Apostle, but tradition has it that he traveled to and preached the gospel in India, where he was eventually martyred. His name means “twin,” and due to his skepticism, he is also known as “Doubting Thomas.”
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Technicians used a 30-ton crane to lift NASA’s Orion spacecraft on Friday, June 28, 2024, from the Final Assembly and System Testing cell to the altitude chamber inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft, which will be used for the Artemis II mission to orbit the Moon, underwent leak checks and end-to-end performance verification of the vehicle’s subsystems.
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A reading from the Book of Amos AM 3:1-8; 4:11-12
Hear this word, O children of Israel, that the Lord pronounces over you, over the whole family…
Around the year 64, the city of Rome experienced a devastating fire. Emperor Nero blamed it on the Christians, and a severe persecution followed. Included in the mass murder of Christians were the First Martyrs of Rome. We don’t know their names, but their witness to the faith is certain.
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This labyrinth – with a silhouette of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes at its center – is used as a calibration target for the cameras and laser that are part of SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), one of the instruments aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. The image was captured by the Autofocus and Context Imager on SHERLOC on May 11, 2024, the 1,147th day, or sol, of the mission, as the rover team sought to confirm it had successfully addressed an issue with a stuck lens cover.
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Target: Io Mission: Juno Instrument: JIRAM Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM/MSSS |
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Target: Io Mission: Juno Instrument: JunoCam Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS |
We celebrate two great saints today, Saints Peter and Paul. Saint Peter is often considered the Apostle to the Jews and Saint Paul to the Gentiles (based, most probably, on his extensive travels among the Gentiles). Together they witnessed to the budding of Christianity, and both laid down their lives for the faith.
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Good night, my Guardian Angel,
The day has sped away;
Well spent or ill, its story
Is written down for aye.
And now, of God’s kind Providence,
Thou image pure and bright,
Watch over me while I’m sleeping.
My Angel dear, good night!
Saint Cyril of Alexandria was instrumental in the Church’s doctrinal statement that there is one person but two natures in Christ. The practical implication of this teaching is that we believe that Jesus is truly God and truly human.
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Target: Galaxy NGC 1512 Mission: Instrument: , Faint Object Camera , Near Infrared Camera , Multi-Object Spectrometer Image Credit: NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute |
Named RCW 7, the nebula is located just over 5300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. Nebulae are areas of space that are rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until they coalesce into protostars, surrounded by spinning discs of leftover gas and dust. In the case of RCW 7, the protostars forming here are particularly massive, giving off strongly ionising radiation and fierce stellar winds that have transformed it into what is known as a H II region. The ultraviolet radiation from the massive protostars excites the hydrogen, causing it to emit light and giving this nebula its soft pinkish glow. Here Hubble is studying a particular massive protostellar binary named IRAS 07299-1651, still in its glowing cocoon of gas in the curling clouds towards the top of the nebula. To expose this star and its siblings, this image was captured using the Wide Field Camera 3 in near-infrared light. The massive protostars here are brightest in ultraviolet light, but they emit plenty of infrared light which can pass through much of the gas and dust around them and be seen by Hubble.
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A Secular Franciscan, Blessed Raymond Lull spent his life supporting the study of languages necessary for successful work in the missions. It wasn’t until late in life that he saw any fruition of his labors, when language chairs were established in several universities.
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This post spotlights born-digital, georeferenced map series from the MapServer Ethiopia project, which provides modern mapping of Ethiopia at five different scales, across multiple themes.
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