SPACE WATCH
NASA -
Credit & Copyright: Stephen Leshin
A remarkable telescopic composition in yellow and blue, this scene features a trio of interacting galaxies almost 90 million light-years away, toward the constellation Virgo. On the left, two, spiky, foreground Milky Way stars echo the trio galaxy hues, a reminder that stars in our own galaxy are like those in the distant island universes. Predominately yellow, with sweeping spiral arms and dust lanes, NGC 5566 is enormous, about 150,000 light-years across. Just below it lies small, blue NGC 5569. Near center, the third galaxy, NGC 5560, is multicolored and apparently stretched and distorted by its interaction with NGC 5566. The galaxy trio is also included in Halton Arp’s 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 286. Of course, such cosmic interactions are now appreciated as a common part of the evolution of galaxies. more> http://tinyurl.com/28zz9vw
By Megan Fellman – One Chicago skyline is dazzling enough. Now imagine 15,000 of them.
By Jeffrey Krauss – The facts go something like this: Williams Communications (later acquired by Level 3) in 1995 entered into a $31 million contract to install a backbone fiber network in the NYSTA ROW. Months later, it realized that it would need more access points to connect to customers along the route (such as TWC) than were originally planned. Since Williams needed this additional access to make full use of its $31 million investment, NYSTA offered outrageous terms, and Williams accepted them. As Verizon said, “Localities can coerce carriers into paying these outlandish fees by delaying negotiations, leaving sunk investments stranded until carriers accede to their demands.” 
