Over the next few weeks (July/ August 2013), I will be posting some poems under the banner headline above. Some readers will recognise the phrase as coming from the second verse of the hymn 'Angel voices ever singing'. But it can readily be borrowed to celebrate some of the many amazing discoveries from space in this early part of the 21st century. Each poem will be written in the same metre as the hymn: it will try and capture the outline information available (at the time of writing) about the astronomical 'find' or phenomenon. Here is the first. The information together with an illustration of can be checked out in far more detail at NASA's Gamma-ray only Pulsar entry
Beyond
the Farthest - (PULSAR CTA1 in Cepheus )
Spinning wildly, sending earthwards
solely gamma rays,
thrice a second, crushed to neutrons
post its solar days:
pulsing for a hundred centuries,
energy to quite amaze.
In its remnant supernova
it careens apace.
Million miles each sixty minutes,
hurtling on through space.
As the radiance saps its powering
its rotation slows a trace.
Many bodies of this nature
can now be discerned
by wide-ranging wave detectors
helping us to learn.
Ponder then with awe and wonder
How our universe is turned.
Could be sung to the tune ‘Angel Voices’ below
if you appreciated this, you might also enjoy Nebula and in a lighter vein Black Hole
The second poem in this mini-series, Pristine Exoplanet can be found here
Could be sung to the tune ‘Angel Voices’ below
if you appreciated this, you might also enjoy Nebula and in a lighter vein Black Hole
The second poem in this mini-series, Pristine Exoplanet can be found here
