Galactic Peekaboo

By Harley White posted 01-27-2023 07:57

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Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Anand (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

Galactic Peekaboo

About twenty-two million light-years away
a galaxy dubbed ‘Peekaboo’ was espied,
its moniker stemming from game toddlers play
by virtue of how it’s been tending to hide.

The peanut-shaped galaxy is quite petite
plus speckled with spots midst its hue of bright blue,
at any rate through Hubble’s imaging feat
which pictures this dwarf coming into full view.

Perhaps Peekaboo’s been a lone misanthrope
that was happier hidden behind a star,
yet has entered the lens of a telescope
as the foreground sidereal’s repertoire

induced it to hasten its brilliance aside
(since space panoramas incessantly morph),
with peekaboo peering at earthlings wide-eyed—
to anthropomorphize the galaxy dwarf.

Just one thousand two hundred light-years in span,
considered to be tiny galaxy-wise,
albeit gigantic for our human scan,
it’s deemed highly special regardless of size.

They say it harks back to an earlier day
to wit, a galactic development age,
in our peekaboo metaphor, a Piaget
early cognitive childhood maturing stage,

videlicet, called ‘object permanence’, said
to typically evolve in a being
psychologically (though here overhead)—
an understanding that what one is seeing

continues to be or exist even when
the entity has disappeared from our sight
or all other senses encompassed in ken,
which leads me to wonder if humankind might

be primitive still in reality’s grasp,
yet so far advanced in technology skill
that often one feels compelled merely to gasp
at the sheer stupidity of human will

in seeking to solve the dilemmas perceived
or ‘ill-perceived’ maybe would better the phrase
to express the primeval concepts believed
related to Man’s kind of peekaboo gaze.

Indeed this analogous theme I have sketched,
or stretched, as to many a mind could appear,
admittedly seeming a little farfetched,
nonetheless has characteristics to fear

as shown in behavioral traits that are shared
with the animal realm of which we’re a part
but try to deny— oh if only we dared
to take a good look at ourselves, for a start…

~ Harley White

* * * * * * * * *

Some sources of inspiration were the following…

Peekaboo ~ Wikipedia…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peekaboo

Tiny, Hidden Galaxy Provides A Peek Into The Past (ESA)…
https://esahubble.org/images/opo22051a/

Explanation: Tiny galaxy HIPASS J1131–31 peeks out from behind the glare of star TYC 7215-199-1, a Milky Way star positioned between Hubble and the galaxy. One hundred years ago, this fast-moving foreground star would have appeared directly in the line of sight, and the “Peekaboo” galaxy would not have been detectable at all… With the resolution and sensitivity of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers resolved 60 stars in the galaxy and were struck by the fact that they all appear to be relatively young—a few billion years old or younger. This is very unusual in the nearby universe, which has had about 13 billion years of cosmic history to develop. Peekaboo’s stars indicate that it is one of the youngest and least-chemically-enriched galaxies ever detected in the local universe… Peekaboo is, in effect, a direct portal into the past…

[Image Description: A large bright star is centered, with four long rays extending in an X shape. Between the rays on the right is a small blue peanut-shaped galaxy with some bright spots. Smaller similar stars and orange background galaxies fill image.]

Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Anand (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

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