GALAXY
The
planetarium referred to in the first verse existed in the now defunct
Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences or The
Technological Museum. It has been replaced by the Powerhouse Museum.
In my teens it was a place of science and mystery - a little cramped
with a bit of a Ray
Bradbury atmosphere.
It featured
things like a transparent woman whose different organs and systems
lit up as she rotated to a Boccherini Minuet (String
Quintet in E Major, Op. 13) and a computer that played Noughts and
Crosses (Tic-Tac-
Toe). It
developed a fault enabling you to beat it but when you did it changed
the board and claimed it had won (a foretaste of things to come ?).
It was also where I witnessed colour television for the first time.
But my favourite thing was the planetarium where dusk sank behind the
black cardboard skyline
of
Sydney and the operator would point to stars and planets as they
moved across the dome using his little arrow torch.
Carina Nebula
Notes- Three hundred
thousand million stars- an estimate as no one is sure of the exact
figure but using various methods astronomers seem to agree that it is
at least one hundred thousand million (one hundred billion in
American billions) and probably higher. Mind-bogglingly there are a
similar number of galaxies in the known universe.
The
cluster with the myriad of stars I
have seem is the globular cluster in
Centaurus (Omega
Centauri (NGC 5139
)
through a Newtonian reflector telescope with an 8 inch mirror. The
five hundred thousand miles an hour and the two hundred millions
years are rounded out
a bit.
Here is a more exact entry from Wikipedia.
The galactic year,
also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the
Solar System to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Estimates of the length of one orbit range from 225 to 250 million
terrestrial years.
The Solar System is
traveling at an average speed of 828,000 km/h (230 km/s) or
514,000 mph (143 mi/s) within its trajectory around the
galactic center, a speed at which an object could circumnavigate the
Earth's equator in 2 minutes and 54 seconds; that speed corresponds
to approximately one 1300th of the speed of light.
A mosaic of 50 separate images of the galactic center taken by astrophotographer Robert Gendler.
GALAXY
The artificial light has faded from
The cardboard skyline. Now pale points of light
Are dimpling the dark-domed planetarium.
We sit within a semblance of the night.
Our stellar host elucidates and wields
A cosmic arrow on the turning sky
And shows the hazy band that spans star fields.
Quite casually the numbers pass us by:
Three hundred thousand million stars. And each
A sun. Is this beyond all feeling's reach?
And I remember frost-clear nights when darkness
Was palpable upon wide upper spaces.
And there, upon the real, star-dotted vastness,
I saw the galaxy's white, milky traces
Arched overhead from earth rim to earth rim.
And gazing upwards in receptive quiet,
It seemed quite possible to gain a dim,
Grand apprehension of the depth of night.
But some perception of this arcane glory
Depends, perhaps, on how you spin the story.
For it's not hard to find a facile phrase
On "distances beyond imagination".
And it's not hard to talk in expert ways
Of light-years and of galaxies' creation.
Soon clichés drown a living comprehension
And dull immediate, informing sight;
Until you steer a telescope's attention
Upon the milky way's sky-spanning light;
Resolving it to far suns, each a spark,
Like gleaming sand grains, scattered on the dark,
And see the vast and glowing clouds of gas
And clusters with such myriad of stars
Each centre merges to a misty mass;
And know these things are not just some ideas
But of our cosmos, real as all on earth,
As real as stones and trees, as clouds and flowers...
More real by far than fame and honour's worth,
And schemings of the wrongly-named "World
Powers".
What power is power compared to all of these
Worlds without end on space and time's vast seas?
Worlds without end: how shall we feel this speaking?
We dwarfs who measure time by hours and days?
How can we sense our sun's great helix sweeping
On through those time-deep, wonder-filled star ways?
How at five hundred thousand miles an hour
To circle this, our single galaxy,
Will take two hundred million years. O how
Shall we touch truth of such immensity?
Great empires are but some minutes here,
Within the passing of this cosmic year.
Men dream mad dreams of power, war and kill
For rule so brief on one small globe, believing
That this imparts some majesty to will,
When all that's ever left is waste and grieving.
And even murder for some mere conception,
When it is manifest in all the height
That there is much beyond earth-small perception,
The limits of our Lilliputian sight.
Beyond earth's edge goes the world far beyond the
far;
No human craft can touch a single star.
And so, when daylight's done and there outside
The night releases vision of the vastness,
And shows the pale an stellar stream stretched wide,
The pathway of the worlds across the darkness-
Then called to heart is sure belief that being
Has depths beyond our deepest, searching thought,
Has heights beyond our farthest, sharpest seeing,
And this, at least, is heart truth of one sort.
Three hundred thousand million stars; and each
A sun- it's not beyond all feeling's reach.
Thank you
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