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Lenticular Twist
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Lenticular galaxy NGC
four seven five three is a twisted disk,
or so it appears in the imagery,
with filament paths where dreamers might frisk.
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It’s laced with tracery of dusty lanes
for starry-eyed poets to romp and play
far off from our so-called earthly domains
about sixty million light-years away.
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In picture nearly edge on it is seen
with spiral arms that are quite ill-defined
through the Hubble’s resolving power keen
with elliptical shape that’s shown reclined.
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To be the result of merger ‘tis thought
more than a billion light-years in the past
with nearby dwarf galaxy when ‘twas caught
so that its formation was then recast.
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From this event, dusty pathways accrued
around the galactic nucleus where
reside in the Virgo assemblage brood
these debris trails with their intricate air.
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‘Twas spotted by William Herschel first in
seventeen eighty-four, thus it’s stated
torn apart and distorted in a spin
until this clustered form was created,
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or in such way it’s been hypothesized
as here on the ground our theories we sift,
while spinning out schemes ever improvised
whose aptness so often misses the drift.
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~ Harley White
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Some sources of inspiration were the following…
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Astronomy Picture of the Day ~ The Twisted Disk of NGC 4753…
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241231.html
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Explanation: Pictured NGC 4753 is a twisted disk galaxy, where unusual dark dust filaments provide clues about its history. No one is sure what happened, but a leading model holds that a relatively normal disk galaxy gravitationally ripped apart a dusty satellite galaxy while its precession distorted the plane of the accreted debris as it rotated. The cosmic collision is hypothesized to have started about a billion years ago. NGC 4753 is seen from the side, and possibly would look like a normal spiral galaxy from the top…
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Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: Alexander Reinartz
#poetry