Thoughts in the Dark

I used to hate this time of year and the unrelenting darkness. Get up and go to work in the dark, come home in the dark, all dark all the time. I do cherish my time with the constellations, looking up and finding the stars, tracing the formations, hoping for a glimpse of the Milky Way on a cloudless night. If only it wasn't so damn cold. Hard to appreciate Orion skulking on the horizon or the Little Dipper dumping stars on your head when your teeth are chattering. As much as I love Mars, I won't be up at 3:30 am to watch it rise.

I used to hold my breath until December 21st, hoping I could make it through the shortest day of the year. It doesn't seem so bad this year. With the constellations at night and the sunrise in the morning, everything is okay. I love seeing the first cracks of dawn push their way over the horizon.  Pinks and oranges and teals, with some racy purples mixed in. Then the orb rises and pushes the darkness away, painting the tops of tree with gold light. Who couldn't like that?

This time of year also brings Christmas lights. Sometime a extravagant excess of lights, but pretty lights all the same. The neighbors whose display could be seen from the ISS moved, so I don't have to put my lightblocking curtains up in the front window. Playing Christmas music along with the lights starting on Thanksgiving should be outlawed. Just saying. But other neighbors have some gorgeous displays. I love just blue lights on evergreens, and the icicle lights draped over gutters and around trees. Not so fond of the blow up cartoons and moving ornament spotlights.

The dark also alleviates the guilt over wanting to sit inside and knit or write or do artwork when my inner voice nags me to go outside and enjoy the day. Sometimes I listen to that inner voice, turn off the computer, head out to enjoy the little bits of sunshine and warm days we get this time of year. All too soon the sun sets, but I linger outside to watch Orion clamber over the horizon chasing Taurus, the Pleiades huddled together like we do when faced with darkness.

So how do you handle the long winter nights? The long dark? The long wait until spring?

Fragment Friday - The Pluto Edition

New Horizons probe,  Pluto and Charon (image courtesy nasa.gov)

1.  What an exciting week for science! We have our first closeup views of Pluto as seen from the interplanetary space probe New Horizons. " New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006, from Cape Canaveral, directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory with an Earth-relative speed of about 16.26 kilometers per second (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph); it set the record for the highest launch speed of a human-made object from Earth." (source: Wikipedia) 

2. Here are some sites to look at pictures of Pluto and find out more about the New Horizons probe. 

NASA - http://www.nasa.gov/feature/latest-images-of-pluto-from-new-horizons

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab - http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

Pluto, complete with landmark heart. (image courtesy nasa.gov)

3. You'll always be a planet to me...

"Pluto is likely the largest and most-massive member of the Kuiper belt. Pluto's status as part of the Kuiper belt caused it to be reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006." (source: Wikipedia) 

 

 

4.  Pluto is designated a "Dwarf Planet" 

"A dwarf planet is a planetary-mass object that is neither a planet nor a natural satellite. That is, it is in direct orbit of the Sun, and is massive enough for its shape to be inhydrostatic equilibrium under its own gravity, but has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." (source: Wikipedia)

This designation is being debated again now that more information is coming in about Pluto. 

Size comparison, Pluto, moon Charon, and Earth. (image courtesy nasa.gov)

5.  It takes about 4.5 hours for New Horizons to send communications back to Earth, and 4.5 hours for Earth to respond. After all, Pluto is 3 billion miles away. Want to know more about how we talk to such a faraway probe? Read all about it on Emily Lakdawalla's blog at The Planetary Society website. 

Late Breaking Aliens

Yes, we did another Alien Inspection last month, I didn't post it because the Poem A Day challenge was taking up all my brainpower at the time. So here are some pictures from that expedition to the backside of Devils Tower.

This time around was an all wildlife all the time trip. We saw lots, domestic and wild. I used my coworkers Nikon L110(?) camera for this series, not sure I like the autofocus and the big screen on the back is hard to see in sunshine- not that there was a whole lot of that, still, it makes me kind of reconsider replacing my old Canon flip screen. I did like the zoom on it, though. I'd love a digital SLR, but I haven't won the lottery - yet.

Here is the lineup for the expedition. First up - turkeys! The males were strutting, the females disinterested, and the hunters salivating.

"Gertrude! Did you see that? The nerve of some males..."

"Look over here, ladies, check this out..."

"Who da man? I am, oh yeah...
Read? Of course I can't read. Why do you ask??"
On the other hand


The deer were shy and elusive.

The cattle aloof and indifferent.

Or indifferently aloof.

The sheep, though, were curious and strangely scary.

Or shaggy scary.

And now for some landscapes.
Hulett from the golf course, featuring the sawmill.

Red rocks around Hulett
More red rocks and pasture.

Some bonus wildlife from coworker K when she was over in the west side of the state. You'll see why she has no problems slamming on the breaks when I yell 'Stop! Picture!"

Bighorn sheep

Bison

Honkers

Elk


And if that wasn't enough to intimidate you, a wolf track.

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Poems in Space

Observing You From The Other Side Of The Galaxy
by Constance Brewer


Everything is perfect when

you look up from far away.

Everyone's face familiar,

remote, muted as tuned out

radio static – a diminutive

rocket in the stratosphere,

passing overhead. Kaleido-

scope swirls of color spin

beneath a distant sun. Objects

appear to linger – dots, specks,

thought vibrations mined

from isolation. Peering through

the back end of rose-colored

binoculars, the horizon

ideally bent in the shape

of things to come.

Originally published in Distant Horizons

April 16 - Poem A Day Challenge - Color

Today's prompt: "I want you to pick a color, make that the title of your poem, and write a poem that is inspired by that color." Poetic Asides

Probably the hardest prompt yet for me. For some reason, I was immobilized by choice. I started several poems, one with the color white, another focused on a different take on brown, but neither worked for me. It wasn't until I read about stars and their stellar spectrums that it started to click. Another weird one for those who ask "Where do you get your ideas from?" I get them from out there... somewhere.

Categorically Misunderstood

Nobody likes the color brown
I was told once upon a time.
It's such a bland, insipid shade.
Much too close to nature,
a down-to-earth color except
when astronomers hypothesize
about the presence of brown
dwarfs. Pity those poor balls
of gravity-ridden plasma, doomed
to be known for eternity
as sub-stars, too underweight
to sustain stable hydrogen fusion,
core temperature not fierce enough
to burn lithium. They fail to pass
the tests, overshadowed by red,
yellow or white stars, forced
to depend on the gravitational
collapse of material for heat,
a bum huddled around a burning
galactic trash barrel. Scientists
scoff, and call their patinas de-
saturated yellow, when feeling
generous, reddish-orange. Doomed
to the status of co-star, of mere
binary companion, it doesn't matter
how many X-ray flares the brown
dwarfs orbiting Epsilon Indi send
out, their winking infrared emissions
will never signal more than failed
planet in some space gazing eyes.

.

Day 2 - Poem A Day Challenge - Outsider

Day 2 of the April Poem A Day Challenge at Poetic Asides.

Today's Prompt: "Today, I want you to write an outsider poem. You can be the outsider; someone else can be the outsider; or it can even be an animal or inanimate object that's the outsider. As usual, get creative with the prompt and don't be afraid to stretch the limits."

If I'm going to be an outsider, I'm going to be WAY outside. I always wondered if they will do personality typing before they nominated someone to go meet the alien hordes, or if it will be a kind of "You're Up!" type of deal.

I wouldn't be a good alien greeter. The powers that be are better off just leaving me down in the engine room...



Left at Alpha Centauri, Proceed With Caution


I peer out from behind
the relative safety of my face
plate at the gathering of alien
life forms arrayed before me.
Recycled air from the home
planet swirls before my two eyes,
not the four or eight mismatched
pairs. One of the creatures gestures
for me to come down the ramp, away
from the ship. Another indicates
it's absolutely safe to remove
my helmet and breathe their air.
I'm not fooled by the general
gregariousness. I've met foreigners
in other places. I trusted before,
on other planets. Not this time.
You don't live to my advancing
age by being less than cautious.
I pretend to misinterpret the signals.
Before the crowd can turn uglier,
I take a few steps down the ramp,
launch into the canned speech
I give all extraterrestrial beings
who attempt to pry me from my
safety zone, hand out multi-colored
food bricks from stored rations.
They ignore my reluctance to join
them, chatter, eat, wave anemone
antennae. Another few minutes
and they will forget the gawky
Earthling in the ill-fitting space
suit, the one that remains tethered
at all times to the mothership.

Print for Baren Exchange

Print for Baren Exchange # 37A

“Standing on the Periphery”

Theme: Voyages / Journeys

Medium: Linoleum block print

Paper: Stonehenge Natural

Paper size: chuban 10 x 7.5 inches (25.5 x 19cm)

Inks: Daniel Smith waterbased, 4 color + hand colored

Edition: 48