Best Astronomers Poems
A dead star that inspired this poem--the companion of the star 55 Cancri, in the constellation of Cancer the Crab--has now shrunk to only about twice the size of earth yet is extraordinarily massive, leading astronomers to conclude that its surface and outer crust consist entirely of diamond.
In slumber now and thence to dream
of space-time’s stirred and curving sweep,
where stellar furies set agleam
the velvet thrall of endless deep.
Here among a billion suns,
solo Klieg cued nascent spark.
Ensuing life o'er an eon runs
ere treading path of torpid dark.
Adorned in crystal, its bequest—
fusion’s fire did else abate—
bejeweled then, this orb compressed,
now fields of diamonds lie and wait.
Yet perish need to search the endless skies—
diamonds sparkle here in lovely eyes.
Humanity
The pagan pilgrimage, sun-worshippers frequently make
Latter-day phenomenon, take off on a Bronze Age break
Constellations change position, solstices realign
Tropic of Capricorn peaks, Cancer starts its slow decline
Astrologers reassure us, the end is not bespoke
Astronomers can’t sleep, has a supernova awoke?
Healthy cells deconstruct inexorably from their core
Runaway chain reactions, laying waste forever more
Be that as it must, cosmic cataclysms generate thrust
Comets are slightly nudged, on a collision course with us?
Ancients believed them omens, wraiths of impending slaughter
Those billion ton tailed curveballs, catalysed Earth with water
Modern man searches for answers, drowning in misnomers
Melding PhD honours, with chatbot E-diplomas
Teleporting entangled particles, throws back a hack
Time travelling marvel, rewinds the real Bronze Age back?
Absurdness seems lame, yet concomitantly germane
Hawking conserved energy, by merely using his brain
Newton had a bachelors, kept him celibate stable
He’d balls of steel for sure, alas no bearings on that cradle?
Information cannot be destroyed, only zeitgeists can
Synthesised is truth, in the malleable hands of man
Life’s more delicate, gravitas hidden behind a smile
Like tales that flightless birds, buried heads in denial
Ostriches evolved kick-ass legs, and win the biped race
They dig shallow pits in sand, not complex black holes in space
One squawked this revelation before zooming off to die:
“Humankind’s the sole species, with good reason to ask why”?
Astronomers maintain that we came from the sun;
Cast out from a whirling cloud of flammable gas;
Bearing on until all the solar system was spun;
Forming bodies as the whirling became a rushing mass.
Yet after billions of years our source is yet unknown,
According to these researchers even at this day.
To them we took flight like a white hot stone
And soared and circled in a beautiful display.
But believers know by Moses the first great plan;
How heaven and earth came in the beginning,
When there was no light until God’s command,
And no high energy vapors turning and spinning.
John said that light was the life of men;
A true light that came shining into the darkness.
A shining the darkness was unable to comprehend,
Because its understanding lacked needful fitness.
Moving below the vernal earth bathed in the light--
This light which had not yet established a source--
Whose effect meant the cause would soon be in sight,
When God would enthrone the sun without remorse.
He gave it dominion over the sky of the day;
Thus the sun became our great light bearer,
Whose golden gift brightens the day travelers’ way,
And often leads man’s quest for wisdom into error.
The world’s astronomers after a tumultuous debate
have decided to reduce the number of planets to eight.
Little Pluto out in the reaches of the solar system
has been the subject of controversy and criticism.
This body orbiting out in the deep solar space void
is now classified by earth’s sky watchers as a planetoid.
Since the solar system was discovered by Copernicus,
it’s the second time something has lost planetary status.
The object named Ceres was considered as planetary,
but was lessened to an asteroid in the last century.
Some astronomers suspected another planet did dwell.
The search for “Planet X” was begun by Percival Lowell.
The orbits of Uranus and Neptune showed perturbations
by some outer unknown body pulling with gravitations.
For many years, the world’s big telescopes were aimed at the skies.
It was a long and frustrating search causing some tired eyes.
Many astronomers hoped to find this mystery body.
Clyde Tombaugh finally discovered it in 1930.
Pluto has a very large body called Charon for a moon.
A highly eccentric orbit brings it closer than Neptune.
It’s far away where our sun is shining with just a faint glow.
These are a few of the facts astronomers would get to know.
Pluto’s considered one of many things called a “Plutrino”.
It’s the largest of bodies orbiting in the “Kuiper Belt”
Reduction from planetary status is what they all felt.
Teleporting into your giant...galaxy
Eclipsed in time...lost in outer space.
Jumping from start to star
While...holding one captive.
My love comets...yearning...your quaker body,
As...asteroids...attack my sensitive...soul.
A magnetic field...forces my decisions,
Drawing me to a darker abyss.
I gracefully...gravitate toward your love planet.
The captive...star illuminates my path,
Your moon beckons me to stop by and plant my flag.
I orbit your planet for a moment,
Radioactive pulsars...playfully signal,
For my astronomical...atomic landing.
I land on your constellation...beauty;
I touch and tame the milky...way.
Commencing to explore the black...hole.
We make love on a bed of stars,
Looking...like two stuck...satellites in orbit.
My rocket’s fuel gage is full.
I’m about to blast...off.
T-minus: 10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1..lift off.
I’m shooting...stars...as you meteor...shower
And my mind goes into nova...
The Christmas Star
Oh Beautiful Star of Bethlehem
How brightly you did shine!
Yet how you pale in comparison
To child Jesus' light divine.
According to Christian tradition, the Star of Bethlehem, also known as the Christmas star, revealed the birth of Jesus to the Magi (often translated as “wise men” but more accurately translated as “astrologers” or “astronomers”). According to the Gospel of Matthew, the three wise men were inspired by the star to travel from the East to Jerusalem. They knew from the star that the man whose appearance had been foretold had come into the world. They met with Herod to ask where the King of the Jews had been born saying ‘we have seen his star’. Herod was troubled because the magi told him that a king of the Jews had been born and gathered his chief priests and scribes together to find out where the Messiah had been born. His advisers quoted from scripture, the prophet Micah, and answered ‘Bethlehem, the birthplace of King David’. Herod gave this information to the magi but also determined from them at what time the star appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem to search for the child and to bring back word. The Magi departed “and the star which they had seen in the East went before them, until it came and stood over where the young Child was". (Matthew 2: 7 – 10)
The magi were warned in a dream not to return to Jerusalem so they left for their own country by another route. When Herod realised he had been tricked, he ordered the execution of all male children in Bethlehem two years old and younger, based on the information the magi had given him concerning the time the star first appeared.
by Jean McLoughlin
‘Water’ seems a fitting title
of this rhyme on something vital
for the beings we take care of
and the others we’re aware of.
Life on Earth depends on water,
whether human or sea otter,
fish or fowl, whatever creatures
having some subsistence features.
Water may have been existent
in archaic ages distant
long before we tend to think—
even water that we drink.
Yet when in our galactic history
it was formed has been a mystery…
The researchers have debated
as to if it could be stated
that this liquid can be dated
back to when it’s been related
there was a disk of gas and dust
and molecules that were a must
for water that originated
when our ‘system’ was created
(namely, ‘solar’, where we’re fated)…
Or might it be more antiquated?!
Could we trace to outer space
the genesis that took place
of the water in our glass?
If indeed this came to pass,
it would open up new queries,
not to mention E.T. theories…
But that’s within the jurisdiction
of those who compose science fiction.
Many scientists have avowed
that from the Sun’s parental cloud
of interstellar dust and gas,
from which our star derived its mass,
water, well, to be precise,
water in the form of ice
was inherited there and then,
in that olden where and when…
Some astronomers theorize
that what we may not realize
is up to half the H2O
within the oceans that we know
right here on Planet Earth could be,
yes, older than the Sun we see
illuminating from on high,
in daylight’s path across the sky,
our frets and frolics down below,
where heedlessly we come and go…
Water and life go hand in hand,
from briny deep to wooded land.
In the mariner’s rhyming tale,
all the winds at sea did fail,
and the sailors lives were lost—
the idle ship was merely tossed
as if on a painted ocean,
painted ship, devoid of motion.
There was water ‘every where’,
Coleridge says, except that there
was none to quench their parching thirst;
so the voyage seemed doubly cursed.
Water is such precious stuff!
Do we value it enough?
Oh, may there never come a time
(as in that famous rhyming rime)
when as to water here on Earth—
where mortals meet their death and birth—
we too will ever need to think
that there is not a drop to drink!
~ Harley White
Pluto Slam It Planet
It was Aug. 26, 2006 in Prague
Some guys got together for grog
Astronomers by name, came for a game
To vote on the matters of science
Instead they gave Pluto its shame
To their blame they demoted the planet
It was out there as solid as granite
For millions of years it passed without fears
Or concerns about guys with their beers
Now science has banned it
With a vote of 183 yes 187 no no no
Planet Pluto must go
The Czech Republic thought they were thinkers
Allowing “Astronomers” in name, turned out to be drinkers
True, Pluto is tiny and slow as you know
Pluto is only charcoal and snow
Where will Charon, Hydra, Nix, P4, P5 moon companions go?
Are they merely a mirage of the planets pull
Outnumbered by astronomers, political fools?
In our solar system what ignorance grows
248 years to orbit our sun is far too slow for these men
Pluto! You’ll have to move faster or move out again
You can join our party in Prague....but then....
To be a member of our solar system, to justify your existence
You'll have to move quicker my friend....and be sober to that end
Slam It Poetry Contest 5/3/14
In the center of our galaxy
from 1992 through 2003
astronomers were able to observe
a star, orbiting compact radio source
Sagittarius A.
The star had an orbit with average radius
1.4x1014 m
and period 15 years.
From this information astronomers estimated
the mass of Sagittarius A.
v = 2π(1.4x1014)/(15x365x24x60x60) = 1.86x106 m/s
a = (1.86x106)2/(1.4x1014) = 0.0247 m/s2
0.0247 = (6.673x10-11)M/(1.4x1014)2
M = 7.24x1036 kg
7.24x1036/(1.989x1030) = 3.6 million suns!
Astronomers infer that Sag. A is a
supermassive black hole
(it cannot be seen)!
OH LITTLE STAR
The astronomers, common people, kids are gazing
At the Super-moon that has appeared in the sky.
The super-moon is so big, so bright, so charming
That the bystanders cannot even blink their eye.
Next day, the burning furnace of the Sun will burn
The shimmering of Super-moon with its warmth.
What will change tomorrow? Will the waves turn?
Will fate of the poor change? Can death be birth?
The poor who sleep at rough footpaths of the city
Were sleeping starved in the chilly moonlit night.
They had nothing to do with the moon’s luminosity,
If the moon were bread they could eat it with delight.
Here’s a starry poem one might call ekphrastic
about an exploding fireball fantastic
from a ‘nova’, imaged with time-lapse clarity,
all the more remarkable for the rarity
of tracking its expansion– which researchers say
engulfs a place in outer space in just a day
as great as where the orbit of our Earth holds its sway,
at a distance of fifteen thousand light years away,
passing that of Jupiter in less than two weeks–
through some challenging magnification techniques…
Six telescopes collaborated in the huge task
of measuring its size and shape, so as to unmask
the colossal ferocity, albeit remote,
of its “dramatic process”, to astronomers quote.
The eruption that occurred was in the location
of Delphinus– Latin for Dolphin– Constellation.
What causes these spectacular events to arise?
When any of the two of a binary star dies,
as a consequence of its empyrean demise,
it becomes ‘white dwarf’ companion to the larger one.
Then this parasitic partner has some fiendish fun…
In some sort of star-struck, degenerate devotion,
it siphons enough hydrogen to form an ocean
on its surface, till it reaches the critical mass
that will make a brobdingnagian blast come to pass.
Now this formerly faint star system takes center stage
to indeed ‘against the dying of the light, rage, rage’…
A tremendous fireball is hurled into the skies–
so brilliant that it’s visible with unaided eyes…
Thus it burns out its bright celestial futurity
in that bumpy ride to recurrent obscurity.
Novae may play second fiddle to the ‘super’ kind–
their bigger stellar cousins– in the popular mind,
still these marvelous phenomena my awe inspire–
as does that Dylan Thomas villanelle I admire…
But it was wild man Lewis who captured them entire,
when he belted out, “Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!”
~ Harley White
Wonders of the world abound
on our earthly stomping ground,
in the seven seas profound,
midst the heavens round us wound.
Images from reaches vast
by astronomers amassed
show in varicolored cast,
cosmic glories unsurpassed,
stories of the great immense,
begging questions why and whence,
scenes stelliferously dense,
bringing past to present tense.
Oh how tantalizing to
lose oneself in starry view
of galactic vision new
where a poet’s words ring true!
Tennyson’s ‘Far--Far—Away’,
penned for Music’s haunting play
with the sounds the words convey
as they whisper, swing and sway,
tells of ‘far’ from past long gone,
murmur from ‘his own life’s dawn’?
breath where ‘doors of death’ go on
through an open curtain drawn?
Whether time or space be meant,
or spacetime together bent,
still, whatever sense is lent,
far’s remote in its intent.
After sunset’s crimson blaze
we may raise a dreamy gaze
in escape from troubled days
to celestial splendors praise.
Will our search of cosmic sphere
teach us to esteem what’s here?
Oft stargazers too I fear
must look far to see the near.
~ Harley White
Is space-time a fabric that stretches and strains,
like a grass harp ruffling across the great plains,
when the force of a huge body in motion
makes waves akin to the billowing ocean?
LIGO’s antennae have finally disclosed
those waves gravitational Einstein proposed
that travel along with the swiftness of light
and can’t be obstructed in their spatial flight.
A faint fleeting whoop is the sound that was heard,
resembling the chirp of a faraway bird.
So the Nobel winner, with brilliant foresight
a century past, was again proven right!
In Einstein encomium much overdue,
we praise and applaud what he already knew
from his relativity theory acclaimed,
that pillar of physics for which he is famed.
The presence of mass as a part of his theme
makes space and time curve, in that elegant scheme.
And this is indeed how gravity functions,
not as a force, but as cosmic conjunctions.
Two black holes colliding, a billion light-years
removed, gave a sign that brought triumphant cheers
from the LIGO team, with a soft rising tone
making Einstein’s ineffable notion known.
The project cost umpteen millions of dollars.
Astronomers seemed the leeriest scholars
and felt the investment would be a big waste,
not trusting the models on which it was based.
Miles of steel tubing in L-shaped position
of vacant chambers were used in the mission
for gauging expansions and fluctuations,
with an outcome exceeding expectations.
The breakthrough implies that stargazers can peer
not just with the eye but moreover may hear
stellar storms bending space and changing time’s flow
in colossal activities to and fro.
Yes ripples in space-time were validated,
as Einstein had long ago calculated.
Researchers gave credit to LIGO, although
he is probably saying, “I told you so!”
~ Harley White
* * * * * * * * *
One of the articles that inspired the poem was “Gravitational Waves: What Their Discovery Means for Science and Humanity”
http://www.space.com/31922-gravitational-waves-detection-what-it-means.html#sthash.pFxWYwlQ.dpuf
I AM
one of the swirling celestial bodies
trailing beyond a galaxy’s realm so luminous...
and Jupiter’s neon threads spin , while Orion
and meteors glide along planetary zones
with glazed fingers of light,
floating on colored frames. Somehow,
I am many when my stars parade,
aligning with earth, bursting from each equinox.
And my outer spirit reels into a lunar dance;
every axis heightening flamed energy
while humans throb in their own center...
a metallic twirl, a rhymed tap
entering into a MULTIVERSE, chaste as
the blending circles of moon, dust, sun...
and mankind tries to understand
this wonder of this fluid spectacle---
halo of my Andromeda crown...till
a voice from Genesis echoes,
' Now the whole world has one language.'
.............................
Thvia Shetley's The Cosmos Contest
* Since 1924, astronomers believed there
were nebulae outside the Milky Way. One of
them was known as the Andromeda
Submitted with revisions: 10/12/2017
There is this free ranging
substance filling the whole
universe,
It was called void but now
they named it Dark Matter,
It is an infinite ocean that
floats countless
galaxies,
You could called it as
blackest shroud,
Or sometimes be known as
darkest cloud,
It classification and
composition is still unknown!!
And scientists are still puzzle
by it's origin,
You could call it an element
that is neither living nor dead,
Do not brush lightly of this
amazing thing,
It has godlike power to hold
galaxies and invisible black
holes!!! And only
recently are these scientists
trying to replicate it in
laboratories,
While Astronomers around
the world looked through
their telescopes in their
observatories, With an
acknowledgement of one of
God's greatest mysteries!
Refered to as DARK MATTER,
Used to be called Space.
Sheri Fresonke Harper
Personifying Science contest