Cosmic California

By Harley White posted 02-07-2022 07:34

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Credit: Caltech, Palomar Observatory, Digitized Sky Survey Courtesy Scott Kardel

Cosmic California

For bearing resemblance to state as sprawled,
this nebula California is called.
Sing ho for the Golden State of my birth,
still special to me midst places on earth.

Erstwhile California was thought to be
an island dominion to a degree
named for Calafia fictitious queen
known as warrior-like and often seen

as origin of the term for the state,
notwithstanding it’s open to debate
since various other notions narrate
how it was decided to nomenclate

that southwestern US populous place.
But turning to nebula out in space
that’s about fifteen hundred light-years far,
the picture shows it with hot Menkhib star

just right and above the center of view,
a stellar runaway of bluish hue,
the source most likely for nebula’s glow
from star’s radiation in forceful flow.

The whole NGC One Four Ninety-nine
spreads out like the state in outline design
of star-forming California-shaped cloud
by artistry empyrean endowed.

Orion’s arm of our home Milky Way
along with the Sun star which makes our day
and every year we go once more around
is where this cloudscape emission is found.

It’s more or less one hundred light-years long
the nebula California dust throng,
gargantuan next to coast to coast miles
from ocean to ocean in single files

across conterminous United States,
each with its own individual traits,
three thousands of miles side to side or so
depending on whichever route you go.

While musing upon USA’s expanse,
my mind did a sort of thematic dance
from nebula sculpted with star’s demise
to song of the ‘beautiful spacious skies’.

A train trip of Bates had served to inspire
her lyrical lines on sights to admire
with crowning glory from top of Pike’s Peak
that brought on words of majestic mystique,

which mingled with scenes flashed back from my yore
of reveries drifting to distant shore,
land of my childhood and formative times
of unseasoned reasons, unreasoned rhymes,

then inward along esse byways vast
and rolling remembrances of things past,
sourced deeper than what I agnize I am,
through gush from unleashing a self-made dam.

Oh may I abide in a skyey me
at home in the cosmic infinity
to cruise everafters eternally,
sailing from sea to sidereal sea…

~ Harley White

* * * * * * * *

Some sources of inspiration were the following…

Song ~ “America the Beautiful”~ words by Katharine Lee Bates (1859 –1929)…

Info ~ California Nebula (Wikipedia)…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Nebula

Info ~ Menkhib and the California Nebula ~ Wikipedia…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Menkhib_and_the_California_Nebula.jpg

Image and info ~ NGC 1499: California Nebula (APOD)…
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050310.html

Explanation: Drifting through the Orion Arm of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, this cosmic cloud by chance echoes the outline of California on the west coast of the United States. Our own Sun also lies within the Milky Way’s Orion Arm, only about 1,500 light-years from the California Nebula. Also known as NGC 1499, the classic emission nebula is around 100 light-years long. It glows with the red light characteristic of hydrogen atoms recombining with long lost electrons, stripped away (ionized) by energetic starlight. In this case, the star most likely providing the energetic starlight is the bright, hot, bluish Xi Persei, just right of the nebula and above picture center. Fittingly, this composite picture was made with images from a telescope in California - the 48-inch (1.2-meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope - taken as a part of the second National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey.

Credit: Caltech, Palomar Observatory, Digitized Sky Survey
Courtesy Scott Kardel

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