My obsession for this prompt is one of my telescopes, a 1976 Tele Vue Renaissance 4 inch brass refractor. It’s the Halley’s comet commemorative model.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Focus until the stars look like tiny points of light. Do you see one that looks out of focus?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“If you look closely, you’ll see that it looks like a tiny donut.”
“Maybe.”
“Here, I’ll put in the 7 mm eyepiece to give you a higher magnification and better contrast.”
“Oh, now I can see that it’s a ring. What is it?”
“That’s M57, the ring nebula. What you see is gasses and dust expanded at about 1 million miles an hour. It’s where a medium size star has lived out its life and all that’s left is a white dwarf.”
“Oh.”
~~~~~~~
Globular cluster
M 13 in Hercules
Two hundred thousand stars
Tight as a pod of peas.
Not in the Milky Way
Galaxy’s spiral plane,
Rather her halo, as
Halley could ascertain
Twenty five thousand or
So light years distant, plus
Some fourteen billion years
Older than us.
“Oh, Wow! That is awesome!
You found it so easily!”
Keystone of Hercules
Gives me the key.
~~~~~
My Renaissance~ Haiku
Brass lightly tarnished
Halley’s commemorative
Window to cosmos.
~~~~~~
The Renaissance. A rebirth of the classical quest for learning, artistic expression and appreciation of beauty. My wish for you is a renaissance of your very own: an awakening of your consciousness of all that is of eternal true value.
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Comments: 64
loved his john! a breath of fresh air for the morning.
These writings are of high quality, poetic, sophisticated.
The first piece is brilliant. I already have written for the Apple prompt. Tomorrow(Tonight at your side) I may post them.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977890478
flesh of an apple
a renaissance of my own... yes, in search of....
children and so forth. I simply loved this piece that you penned
dear man. Thank you so much John.
Hugs n Love, Barbie
Great job John. I like the variety of things you have done with this post. Excellent writing as usual.
Thank you for the challenge, the feature and the comment, Atticus.
I especially like the Globular cluster poem
I grew up with parents that loved to view the stars, well, my mother did anyways and an uncle that had a huge telescope, that if we, as kids were really good, we were allowed to look through it and view another world.
Do I miss that? Yes, but you just reminded me what it was like.
Marilyn
This became the renaissance of my formerly dreary day!
And what a great haiku......
However, I suspect you were not looking at the stars, but were looking for donuts. You luckily spotted a neighbor with a box of donuts and soon rang their doorbell. Yes???
This was great. I miss my telescope. I had a nice one at one time. I am a sky watcher and Love the beauty that is found there.
It is terrific. To me, all we need to do is look up. We are instantly humbled and connected.
View the night sky clearly with this refractor telescope that features a solar projection screen and a moon filter for safe solar observation of the sun and moon.
Product features:
660x magnification with a 60mm objective lens diameter
800mm focal length provides precise magnification
Aluminum tripod holds your telescope and adjusts easily
Skywatch CD-ROM with 10,000-object database