Stellar Light
by Harley White
- Published: Thursday, January 23 2020 20:31
Seventeen seventy-four is
when William Herschel noted his
strange discovery with the cry,
‘Truly a hole is in the sky!’
It was in Scorpius confine,
found with his sister Caroline
who verily should have her name
with William’s also sharing fame.
So dark stretches have been discerned
for scores of decades, later learned
to be formation astral zones
at the rear of those somber tones.
Thus NGC One Nine Nine Nine,
termed for year viewed, should toe that line,
‘twas judged, with dim region which must
be just a denser cloud of dust
in a nebula or perhaps
another black one as the lapse.
A reflection nebula called,
the glow around had to be hauled
from variable star behind
lending an aspect to remind
of fog lit up by lamp at night.
To left of center shows the light,
while inked against the astral shine
lies the uncanny dark design.
These nebulae with a cast blue
take on this particular hue
since the interstellar dust grains
will reflect starlight of those stains.
Therefore astronomers were sure
that deeper than foreground obscure
a structure noticeable lay
with other elements in play,
surmised a Bok globule compact
where stars might be molded in fact.
Afterward, with telescopes keen
scientists wondered what they’d seen
as nothing was glimpsed through the fog.
Could it be a much thicker clog?
But no it was not what they thought.
Indeed observations had caught
a peek at yes an empty space
in midst of a misty embrace.
For when radio scope had peered,
what they witnessed was something weird;
expecting to see stars, instead,
the hole, even in infrared,
through the ESA Herschel device
was still there, as spied in a trice,
with no causal reason clear-cut
apparent for why what was what—
quite a surprising mystery
in stellar-watching history!
The ‘hole’ it’s conjectured was shaped
by gas jets from young star escaped
which pierced through the nebulous cloud
and removed the stuff in the shroud.
This scheme is within Orion
(in myth a gigantic scion
of a Gorgon and Neptune born)
constellation seen to adorn
the celestial equator spheres
about fifteen hundred light-years
away from our dear planet home
neath the grand sidereal dome
where beings dwell in woods and trees
or fly through skies and swim in seas,
albeit dwindling rapidly
while humans look on vapidly…
To turn to a free verse poet
who lyricized the inchoate,
Walt Whitman wrote in work well-know
some divinations of his own
with singular expansive tone
of self beyond the self o’ergrown,
ere theorists had opened door
into the multiverse’s lore,
to ‘let one’s soul stand cool before
a million universes more’
‘and stay composed’, because he saw
ahead of Hubble or his law
perhaps through visionary awe
a cosmos vast on which to draw.
He lived during a special stage
of astronomy’s golden age;
sightings new turned many a page
and stargazing became the rage.
The undiscovered flux engrossed
Walt Whitman’s fantasy the most.
In revolt at certainty’s pride
his nature reveries would stride
into artistic realms untried
with a breadth of awareness wide.
Back then our galaxy was deemed,
in Man’s convictions long esteemed,
the only one, yet Whitman dreamed
of systems further than what seemed.
In ‘Learn’d Astronomer’, we feel
no matter what the proofs reveal
that diagrams and charts conceal
the twinkling heavens’ true appeal
as poem’s speaker has to leave
the lecture-hall thus to retrieve
his mood of wonderment naïve
and by himself the stars perceive.
For what wherefore, or why, or whence
could serve to sense the great immense?
~ Harley White
* * * * * * * * *
Some sources of inspiration were the following…
Article about Walt Whitman in ‘Brain Pickings’…
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/05/31/astrophysicist-janna-levin-reads-when-i-heard-the-learnd-astronomer-walt-whitman/
Poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”, by Walt Whitman
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45479/when-i-heard-the-learnd-astronomer
As regards NGC 1999, the articles that follow reflect some of the changing perspectives on the cause of the ’empty patch’ phenomenon. My poem mentions in particular the hypothesis referred to in the National Geographic article of 2010.
Image and info ~ Reflection Nebula NGC 1999 ~ Astronomy Picture of the Day
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap000302.html
Image and info ~ Reflection Nebula NGC 1999
https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2000/10/952-Image.html
Image and info ~ Reflection nebula NGC 1999
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2017/10/Reflection_nebula_NGC_1999
Image and info ~ Reflection nebula NGC 1999
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-image-nebula-ngc.html
Info (2010) ~ Hole in Space Found by Orbiting Telescope
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/5/100512-science-space-black-hole-herschel-stars/
Info (2010) ~ Herschel finds a hole in space
http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Herschel/Herschel_finds_a_hole_in_space
Info (2013) ~ In Orion, There Really is a Hole in the Sky
https://www.universetoday.com/99596/in-orion-there-really-is-a-hole-in-the-sky/
Image and info ~ NGC 1999 Wikipedia…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_1999
Image explanation ~ NGC 1999 is a dust-filled bright nebula with a vast hole of empty space represented by a black patch of sky. It is a reflection nebula, and shines from the light of the variable star V380 Orionis… When the dark patch was first imaged, it was assumed to be a very cold, dense cloud of gas and dust, so thick as to be totally opaque in visible light, and blocking all light behind it. In general, such globules are known to be small cocoons of forming stars, but thanks to ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, which would have been able to see any hints of star formation at infrared wavelengths but did not, along with ground-based observations, it turned out to be a truly empty patch of sky… The exact cause of this phenomenon is still being investigated…
Image credit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI) and NASA
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