Saturday, July 25, 2009

bLaCk-EyEd oMpHaLoS HAIKU



sWiRLiNg TeNtAcLeS
wItH vAsT bLaCk-EyEd oMpHaLoS
iS tHeRe LiFe iNSiDe?



***


Coiled Creature of the Night

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has imaged a wild creature of the dark -- a coiled galaxy with an eye-like object at its center.

The galaxy, called NGC 1097, is located 50 million light-years away. It is spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars. The "eye" at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. In this color-coded infrared view from Spitzer, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the ring of stars, white.

The black hole is huge, about 100 million times the mass of our sun, and is feeding off gas and dust along with the occasional unlucky star. Our Milky Way's central black hole is tame in comparison, with a mass of a few million suns.

The ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy is causing the ring to light up with new stars.

The galaxy's red spiral arms and the swirling spokes seen between the arms show dust heated by newborn stars. Older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue. The fuzzy blue dot to the left, which appears to fit snuggly between the arms, is a companion galaxy. Astronomers say it is unclear whether this companion poked a hole in the larger galaxy, or just happens to be aligned in a gap in the arms.

Other dots in the picture are either nearby stars in our galaxy, or distant galaxies.

This image was taken during Spitzer's cold mission, before it ran out of liquid coolant. The observatory's warm mission is ongoing, with two infrared channels operating at about 30 Kelvin (minus 406 degrees Fahrenheit).

Infrared light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns is blue; 4.5-micron light is green and 8.0-micron light is red. The contribution from starlight measured at 3.6 microns has been subtracted from the 8.0-micron image to enhance the visibility of the dust features.

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2009-14/ssc2009-14a.shtml



Monday, July 13, 2009

ANDWLITA





Not just one more face
Of the Human Race

But one with noble
Character and grace

With a wisdom that's
From a far-away place

Perhaps from the
Mayan race or

A land before time
That time will not erase.

[This was written for my dear wife Herlinda Guadalupe Franco Castillo]





Thursday, July 09, 2009

THE DODO



By Roelandt Savery


By Roelandt Savery


By Roelandt Savery




Oh oddball
Dodo
Wherefore did
You go?
Was your Didus Ineptus
A little too much for us?
Was it your
Phsiogonomy
And anatomy
That took you
From our shore?