Today is February 29, leap day .  Why do we have this?   Through the course of a whole year, to keep our season stable, you would need to add nearly 6 hours.   In other words, over the course of 120 years, the world would gain a month, and if this continued, agriculture, for one, would be affected. So you make this up every four years.   Actually, the gain is 5 hours, 48 minutes and 20 seconds. Note that the world skipped leap years in 1700, 1800 and 1900, but not 2000.  The next leap year to be skipped will be in 2100. Leap year was recognized by the Egyptians more than 5000 years ago, but it took them 2700 years to establish a new calendar. In time Hebrew, Chinese and Buddhist time-keepers added a full month every 120 years. However, Rome in 46 BC, then ruled by  Julius  Caesar, added an extra day at the end of February every four years, which for them was the last month of the year.  Thus the  Julian  Calendar. Pope  Gregory  XIII in 1586 decreed that 10 days be skipped, creating

Today, no politics, no wars, no Trump.  All space science, for astronomers found what may be the Universe's brightest object in the sky,  J0529-4351 , and it's humongous. Out there 12 billion light-years away is a quasar with a black hole at its heart, growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a Sun a day. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. From your early science courses you must remember that the Sun is 92 million miles from us. A light year ( which is a unit of length ) is equivalent to doing 31,500 round trips to the sun. Thus, you would need to do that 12 billion times to get to J0529-4351. This quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our Sun.   That black hole powering that quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our Sun.  But there are bigger ones, for at the center of the galaxy cluster Abell 1201 is a black hole equivalent to 30 billion Suns. This is the most violent place in our Universe. Age?  Began to form not long after the Big Bang.

First, some news summaries: Looks like the U.S. Congress, mostly the fault of the House, will not by Friday provide stopgap funding for some of our Federal agencies, thus partially shutting down certain departments. Big deal?  Not particularly, as this  has happened 10 times since 1981 . Also, the offices affected are not so crucial.  The important ones need funding by March 8.  But even then, "essential" employees, including the president and the Congress, will continue to work and be paid under any circumstance. The longest shutdown was during Trump's reign, when functions stopped for more than a month. Chances are that something will happen next week to again, temporarily, re-open our government. By the time you read this,  moon lander Odysseus might not be working,  a few days earlier than planned.   Not a great mission, for the lander tipped over on landing, preventing full use of the solar panels. Watch a video  of what happened. Sent a few great photos. About that