Author: mick

The Cigar Galaxy is the archetypal starburst galaxy, having experienced two recent spates of star formation. One occurred10 million years ago in its nucleus, and another sprang up 5 million years ago in a ring around the galaxy’s core. This froth of starbirth drives a so-called galactic superwind: dust, gas, and radiation that flow out…

Zakir Hussain (born 9 March 1951) is a tabla virtuoso, composer, percussionist, music producer, film actor and eldest son of legendary tabla player Ustad Allah Rakha. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1988, and the Padma Bhushan in 2002, by the Government of India presented by President Abdul Kalam. He was also awarded the…

Dorothy Jacqueline Keely (March 9, 1928 – December 16, 2017), better known as Keely Smith, was an American jazz and popular music singer, who performed and recorded extensively in the 1950s with then-husband Louis Prima, and throughout the 1960s as a solo artist. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Smith was of Irish and Cherokee ancestry. Jesse…

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9 or 19, 1930– June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer. In the 1960s, he was one of the founders of free jazz, a term he invented for his album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. His “Broadway Blues” has become a standard and has been…

Interstellar dust clouds and bright nebulae abound in the fertile constellation of Orion. One of the brightest, M78, is near the center in this colorful telescopic view, covering an area north of Orion’s belt. At a distance of about 1,500 light-years, the bluish nebula itself is about 5 light-years across. Its blue tint is due…