Category: Space

Miranda, revisited

Miranda, revisited

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

(previously posted but now with annotations,  links and such. being a bit nerdy today… sometimes more goes into a poem than I care to think about… sometimes…)

PIA18185_Miranda's_Icy_Face

dear Miranda, (*1)
but just a glimpse
a fading pass (*2)
for you hide and dance
forever show the same face (*3)
within a tempest born (*4)
the scars of stars upon your form
all about craters worn
from drunken horde, magicians wand (*5)
father Prospero’s hand, Stephano’s yard
Trinculo’s joke read out on your garb
your scarps take breath
Verona Rupes
in all the moons of this
solar system our bed
your light touch would save (*6)
twelve minute fall
and might I discover
the patterns
the sulci
in which your lines are read,
may we see you again (*7)
not just a glimpse
but a visit then.

  1. I chose Miranda for a number of reasons. One is that the previous four discovered moons of Uranus were named after fairies.  Miranda was the first to be named after a human (well, a character in a Shakespeare play). Besides that designation the topography of Miranda has baffled scientists with it’s seemingly unique (at least here in our Solar System) nature and formations.
  2. Miranda was discovered by Gerard Kuiper in 1948, it was the last moon discovered in the Uranian system until Voyager 2 passed on by in 1986 (after being launched in 1973).
  3. Like our moon, Miranda has Tidal Locking, meaning the same side (or face) always faces the planet it orbits.
  4. Obvious reference to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest from which Miranda was granted it’s name. I was thinking of a loose association of how the planets and moon formed.  There was a cosmic tempest of sorts and then the celestial bodies fell into place like their own little islands (and life on them, well, at least Earth).
  5. More references to The Tempest characters, read more here.
  6. The gravity on Miranda is a fraction of ours here on Earth, so even a fall from Verona Rupes (the tallest cliff known in our Solar System) would take quite some time (twelve minutes is kind of an arbitrary number I picked that could be reasonably accurate).
  7. A reference again to Voyager 2 passing by but also that NASA has hinted at revisiting Uranus in the 2020s (you know, this new decade).
perspective: how our mind tricks us

perspective: how our mind tricks us

by David Koblentz ♥ 1 Comment

earthrisereduced

does looking at this image cause you some disorientation ? In fact, this most famous of photographs is shown here the way it was meant to be seen, or more accurately the way it was actually shot, Bill Anders (Apollo 8) was not thinking about the horizon (which pretty much orients our visual field), he was just a space explorer taking a photo as one celestial body comes into view from right to left (from the capsule orbiting another body). Amazing how that screws us up but yet is a great reminder on how much we take for granted in our daily experience (how limited we are to this sphere and maybe we should think outside of things sometimes, being stuck to the ground with gravity). More remarkable, to me, is also the Apollo missions themselves. Imagine, during the course of just a few years, continued space launches to reach the moon (and walk on it) with the technology of 50 years ago. There were no cell phones, no flat screens, no home PCs, no GPS, no finger spinners… OK, that last one seems inconsequential, I admit, but just chew on that whole for a minute… in the space of three years 12 people walked on another world, hard to even get my head around let alone yours. Just something to think about in the coming year, shoot for the moon they say…

(a nice outline of the entire Apollo project) and since I am being nerdy, here is a loaded poem, I will unpack it at some later date, lots of footnotes to date and take… can you catch them all? (hint: the one link I supplied in the name)

dear Miranda,
but just a glimpse
a fading pass
for you hide and dance
forever show the same face
within a tempest born
the scars of stars upon your form
all about craters worn
from drunken horde, magicians wand
father Prospero’s hand, Stephano’s yard
Trinculo’s joke read out on your garb
your scarps take breath
Verona Rupes
in all the moons of this
solar system our bed
your light touch would save
twelve minute fall
and might I discover
the patterns
the sulci
in which your lines are read,
may we see you again
not just a glimpse
but a visit then.

Inspiration from the cosmos…

Inspiration from the cosmos…

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
afterglow art backlit bokeh
Photo by luizclas on Pexels.com

erudite in the language of the sun
conversations with solar implications
warming rays fade in my waning days
might I stride along your cosmic road
and sit stridently still upon your shore
to witness in glory bathe and full force
waves strip instant of my magnetic core
and for once before my skin burns tender flesh
for the absolute briefest moment might I instead
experience the form that binds and breathes
of all of the universe as neutrinos speed
through – and – passed

notes…  kind of playing around with various concepts, sometimes I just think about things like what it would be like to walk up to the sun to experience the full on force, because I marvel at how the Earth survives in such a harsh environment, if we weren’t exactly X distance (give or take) from the sun, had enough water (comets?), had a strong magnetic field (which creates the aurora borealis) and one huge asteroid decided to land in the Yucatan and wipe out millions of years of dinosaur rule…. that and some sweet lovin’ that went down by my folks and their folks before them before them before them etc…. wow, it is crazy to think about all that had to happen in the universe just for me to be here typing away on my blog… so, yeah, that’s the space I was in writing this… in case you were not wondering… thanks, as usual, comments, likes, spitballs, old tab cans and general flotsam is always appreciated (except for you, the one reading this, I’m kidding of course… or am I? (raised eyebrow provocatively) ) …

music to contemplate the stars… Humanmeshdance – Wet Moon

more thoughts, from the porch (duality)…

more thoughts, from the porch (duality)…

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
astronomy cloud clouds cosmos
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I want to run up that ruby lined ridge line on the back of that mountain of a cloud, right up to the moon, I wish to go there but know I never will, but how soon my romantic side forgets, the moon, sitting there framed in blue, is not quite in our sky, my logical side steps in to remind that the moon is in perfect orbit, locked in the cold black breathless death of space, a dead world, echoes of impacts heard in countless lifeless craters, traces of history of billions of years as if transpired just yesterday, as magical, as mystical as the moon may seem, the man, the moon, the dream, it is the dead end of all being, and what will be, for when life retreats or is drawn to another place, a lifeless husk will remain, dust, gravity no longer caring, losing it’s grip, so weak it becomes just a globe in another’s collection, so which do I choose? of my dual nature I lean to the romanticism of the world, the concept of the eternal, but there is that constant reminder in the sky, whether a sliver, a quarter or full glory, the fact that everything dies is not much consolation for the living, more like a rationalization that we all drive down that dead end road, logic is cold, hard to argue with a stone as words do not carve granite well, or at all, but I suppose what choice do I have but to drive on, forward, with hope, for the alternative, while more rational, more reasoned, more probable, leaves nothing on the bone and in fact no bones… at all.

music?  I can not resist, I am a child of the late 80’s after all… so…

>>>>> Duran Duran – New Moon on Monday

oh yeah, this post is part of The Porch Project which has no rules aside from me sitting out on the porch, days of the week? month? nah… just when I can, and thanks for stopping by, this little bus stop of my mind, I appreciate the time and eyes…. thanks.

Your consciousness, forever, just 9 easy payments of $19.95, act now and we’ll double the offer!

Your consciousness, forever, just 9 easy payments of $19.95, act now and we’ll double the offer!

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
black and blue electronic tools on green circuit board
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

welcome, dear traveler, to a not so distant year, let’s be arbitrary, since I can’t be proven wrong (unless Doc Brown materializes somehow), let’s say 2050 (closer than you may think in a blink), given the commercialization of space what will be the cost of freight ? the freight of… you? firstly there will be your DNA and maybe a bio page or two (perhaps some personal memento or two), shot out into the cosmos like so much a life(less) raft into an ocean vast(er) than we know, imagine your DNA blasted off into the cosmos and found in four million or 40 million years from now, and the technology exists to make a new you, beats the alternative, as they say, but we know people will not stop there, our DNA will be littering the universe I bet (perhaps that is how we got here on Earth in the first place in some form), like all things our appetites grow and the quest for the ever-life will vex all generations forward as it has all those past, a question of the matter becomes a matter of when in terms of mapping out the electrical patterns of our brains, especially with quantum computing flying ahead at such a breakneck pace, so questions about humanity will ultimately rise,  will humans be humans without the physical interface?

phases of the moon
Photo by Alex Andrews on Pexels.com

Non physical consciousness will allow us to venture into all manners of space (and the very depths of our own planet, imagine a vacation into an actual volcano, why not? or a little skinny dip in the mariana trench),  population control will not be an issue per se in this maybe brave new world, your apartment will be your location on a memory chip, your choice of neighborhood might depend on how close you are to one of the core CPUs or a power supply nexus, at that point will we have evolved into AI, of ourselves? will hacking become a form of murder? even if you are just turning off a switch or pulling a plug, and who is left in charge, on the outside, the “fleshers”? the “living”, the “pre-comp”s  as it were…  What will social interaction be like when you have no form, will avatars be your body?  and gender? there will not be any, or well, it won’t be needed, and would people choose to “die” early to transfer into the compu-realm, what if your soulmate dies, do you follow?  Will there be people who fall in love with someone who has been “alive” for 400 years and decide to “transmute” into the digital? I really wonder how far away we are from such things, I bet we are much closer than we think…

and the whole crux of this thought was cheesy infomercials, because even something lofty will eventually be sold for “X” number of installments @ $19.95 (call now, the first 100 callers get a free slap chop and shamwow millennium edition)… but no one touches the king…

notes… yeah, I think about a mash up of stuff all the time, maybe my day consists of classical poetry, string theory and some quantum mechanics…. man can not live on verse alone.. that’s a pretty good tag line… maybe I could use that on a blog or something… hmmm…

music, going cosmic ambient because that is what fits….

>>>> Stellardrone – Invent the Universe

as we are inventing it right now as we go… thanks for the read, pull up a chair and check out all the other jazz I am up to…

if god were to fish, what would be the pond?

if god were to fish, what would be the pond?

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
galaxy stars illustration
Photo by Free Nature Stock on Pexels.com

“god’s fishing pond“

night fishing, sunday
might catch a bear, a scorpion
or a pair of twins
cast a net on a nebula
for minnows are comets
to use for bait
to lure a moon or two
or throw a hook into the cold outreach
hope to snag a neptune
a pluto, an exo-planet or two
or lose a line
the hook
the bait
in an event horizon

notes… file this under whimsy, just one of those silly things that catches me at the moment (I wrote this originally on 5.6, edited tonight), part of the inspiration for this is a work by one of my absolute favorite artists… this…

>>>The Week Before – Dave McKean

take a moment and take it in… subtle and not so…

thoughts from the porch…

thoughts from the porch…

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
clouds dark dark clouds darkness
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

the clouds seem to want to have a conversation tonight, I am not sure what about, they seem quite still, shadows painted flat against the blue, not a blue recognizable as a hue you would associate with day, a blue looking over a ledge right before it fades into black, but still perceptibly blue even at almost nine at night, a commercial flight blinking as it moves across the main face, pulsing in and out, passing in and out,  just as a car passes by, symmetry in random things, a sign? or just reading the page nature has laid out in front of me…

“I’ll surely miss this one day”

so, I must, with my best intent soak it all in, but then, for a moment I notice the yellow jacket lady has a hitch in her walking steps, and that little detail manages to spirit my attention away, until the subtle shfff shfff scrape shfff shfff scrape fades, no matter how much we stop and look at the world in frame, the world is content to whirl around us never stopping, an unpredictable machine with infinite parts, we announce to the universe that we know the ticks, the gears, the hands, but we are still landlocked on this one planetary earth, as sophisticated as we are… string theory, dark matter, chaos theory, astrophysics, a holographic universe, the multiverse, buckyball (I just wanted to throw that in there because of the name), the god particle (higss boson), all fascinating areas to stretch our limited knowledge wider (and I revel in immersing in all these things as possibility is imagination, dreams into reality essentially), but there is also equal satisfaction in staring at the variance of leaves on a simple single tree, as I am doing now, there is enchantment in looking at what we might ignore in the very daily day but it is it’s own complex network of molecules and matter in a nearly infinite scale, I can get lost in the peaks and valleys in just a tree I planted some years ago with these hands, fascination, watching the subtle twitches from insects or a breeze, mesmerizing, I find myself lost in the moment for a moment or some, another plane breaks through, a train calls out in the distance, as the clouds are fading back into the darkening sky, I forgot by now, what was I going to ask them, what were they going to say ?

writing notes idea class
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notes… (this is part of my porch project)..  I was going to post something else tonight but then I sat outside and as I always say “this wrote itself”, because that is the way the muse works through me, I don’t know if this piece conveys the feeling of peace I felt, if not, well, it was…peaceful,  I highly recommend finding a quiet space from the rat race of daily life daily if you can, stripped away of these electronic things (which I equally love to be fair), but just sit there and take it all in, look for details you might have missed…

music…

silhouette of person holding glass mason jar
Photo by Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels.com

Epicuros – Interstellar

Excellent (amazing) ambient space music… maybe I should post these links before my posts as music to read the post by?  I am writing this listening to this… I imagine traveling as light through space…

Pilot in a man suit…

Pilot in a man suit…

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

astronaut_in_space.

SO here I am driving, pondering, I notice something, a strange sensation invades my thoughts

I feel like I am a pilot in a man suit

all these years spent in this body, this sensation seems like an out of body experience, although I have surely never left this vessel, this feels distinctly like I am a passenger or more rightly a conductor, I can perceive the nerve clusters bundled up behind the orbs of my eyes inside the casing of my skull (the construct), these fleshy globes floating in holes, they filter everything I experience while they are engaged in their designed job, I am well aware of how they actually combine images into one, great software I think, even without the upgrade of my glasses, this is the being behind the console, my soul or collection of electronic happenings all in orchestration, might I have the hang of operating this machine by now in all the subtleties of the controls, knobs, buttons, the vast array of senses to touch this outer world beyond the reach of this inner dimension…

as always I am drawn to the impossible moment that is the now, how all the things in the vast everything of existence had to line up in just such a way for me to be here in this very moment, and write this, and you as well, to read this, fellow traveler, all the culmination of randomness (or perhaps purpose, I do not know) in the sheer existence of all time and verses (uni and other), just even the question of how life arrived here on earth (or sprang from boiling pools of goo, not so elegant perhaps), maybe we are the seed dna of aliens piggy backed on a meteor, or comet, or some other celestial traveler, ancient astronaut theorists say ‘YES’, well, if you are familiar with that show, they always say yes, I don’t think I have ever heard them say no, I find the matter fascinating although the actual proof of the matter is lacking, but either way, whether we slithered up out of a pile of muck or hitched a ride on some alien rock – we are here, almost belying the sheer cruel randomness of even just our tiny slice of the milky way, so very surreal, I truly hope I am just a pilot in this biomachine, and one day may I find another vessel to continue this improbable journey but just in case I should quite cherish this one, and perhaps pen a travel log of my experience for others to enjoy should they happen upon this little story of me…

The sun and the moon…

The sun and the moon…

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
switched beige table lamp
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I often wonder would I like to live in more primitive times, to be an ancient as it were, the television would be the sky, the logs my corridors, there is an allure to that simple life but perhaps only if you hadn’t dipped that big toe into the now know, but I try to imagine what the sun and moon would mean not knowing the spin cycle that is the reason for their being in motion, sure, the celestial bodies are still a wonder, but imagine seeing these spheres magically appear and change over the course of a year, has the moon lost some luster ? has the sun lost some bright ?  doubtful… just tonight looking up at a cloudy sky, just one note color, but there, a fuzzy diffused bulb just hanging, close one eye and reach up with a hand circle spyglass, and you could almost touch the thing, even knowing in reality only a handful of humans have actually touched moona firma, and that was 50 years ago, half a lifetime these days, perhaps only a third of a lifetime just down the road, so is our wonder gone or just refocused ? does technology and knowledge disconnect  us?  I might imagine what it was like to be the guy (or gal) that figured out how to create fire on demand, the veritable steve jobs of their day, pimping Ifire, bigger Ifire, Ifire portable, but I imagine people got tired of Ifire when the only difference in Ifire 10 was charcoal briquettes, so I suppose, in all this prose, what I might be trying to say, it is all relative, all generations thought they knew the most, think of those that found all the coasts and what a revelation that was in those times, is the feeling the same now when we find a new exoplanet? or is it blase-faire ?  I often find myself sky gazing these days during the day and star gazing the night when the sun is away. and so I muse…

tonight
I find myself standing
among a forest of naked believers
limbs raised in praise
upwards to the heavens
vibrating in the breeze
so I may look there
and agree,
with no roots holding
may I ascend up into the stars
to continue this journey
into the celestial bounty

Music ? how about some space ambient… I listen to this stuff all the time…

Space Ambient Live Channel on Youtube

perception (and the miracle of life)…

perception (and the miracle of life)…

by David Koblentz ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
sky space dark galaxy
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I am trying to find a way, a reminder, some token to remind me every minute (or as much as possible) how incredibly miraculous life truly is, the amount of factors for life to develop (right at this exact moment) all these billions of years… take our planet on a purely scientific scale (I won’t get too heady, I promise), we don’t think about this everyday (or enough), we are right now (look at your feet) standing on rock islands floating on immensely insane amounts of magma that could torch us to cinder in a hot second, the crust of the planet, our “terra firma” is so incredibly thin, think of the Earth as an apple (whatever varietal strokes your fancy), the crust would be as deep as the skin of said apple (are you getting warmer yet?), furthermore our atmosphere (when viewed from space) is this little thin blue haze that barely extends out off the surface, add to that lucky potion the magnetic field that shields us just enough from the sun’s harmful radiation (but let’s in just enough to let life thrive), just for all those factors to collide and let me be present to type these words – in sheer amazement at the process of time and place, humbling, how do I hold this perspective ? or more surely, how do I apply this jolt, this feeling of almost infinite discovery of the miracle of everything, life itself, this draws me to understand why people wear crosses or other religious symbols, does that work? is the pendant around your neck or a tat’ enough? personally I am not religious in the religious affiliation sense, but I hold no grudge for my fellow travelers who are (I used to be that guy who thought he had all the answers and that those who believe were dumb, yeah, that was me), I am still looking for my personal ah-ha moment (not ‘take me on’), maybe I will never find the end of this path before I meet the end of this path, but! perspective, so much of our little corner of the galaxy (our city block in the country of the milky way if you will) is wrapped in such wonder that I might never wrap my head around it completely, but I know this… nothing we know of or probably will ever know of in our limited lifetime will ever account for all of “this”, I can only hope my foray into the mental exercise of perspective can help to remind me, every blade of grass, the look in my dog’s eyes, the touch of a loved one, the call of gulls as the surf rolls in and again, the stars carousel in the sky… this is a miracle, this life, always remember that as best you may in any times you may despair, think about the amount of things that had to happen just for you to be here, at this moment, truly an incredible miracle of reality.

If anyone has a good idea on how to remind myself or others (instead of just falling into daily routine)… all suggestions are appreciated! thanks.

music ?  damn it, I am going guilty pleasure here, I don’t know why I love this tune so much… it is catchy as hell, I dare ya to tell me otherwise…

Big Country – In a Big Country