About a month ago, I read an article in the NY Times about the 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1601 — was he poisoned by a rival astronomer, Johannes Kepler, or did his bladder burst? The article about the attempts to solve the mystery is quite interesting, and turns out Brahe wasn’t such a nice guy.
One reason I noticed the article in the first place is that I had used Brahe’s star chart of the 1572 supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia (to the left) in a little book I made some years ago, Jean Follain’s poem “Music of Spheres” (see bottom of this post). One of the things I like best about living in Santa Fe is that I can see the stars and planets at night. Reading the article and finding my book again reminded me to go check out our night sky — which I’ve been doing regularly since then.
So I suppose it was bound to happen that I’ve been running across star-themed things and articles for the past few weeks. I think my favorite are these Constellation Eco Cards — “Each card contains an astronomically accurate representation of one of the ten most prominent constellations found in the Northern and Southern hemispheres; the diameter of each star on your card is directly related to that star’s brightness.” Another one, appropriate for this time of year, is this star ornament you can make yourself.
Music of Spheres
by Jean Follain
translated form the French by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert HassHe was walking a frozen road
in his pocket iron keys were jingling
and with his pointed shoe absent-mindedly
he kicked the cylinder
of an old can
which for a few seconds rolled its cold emptiness
wobbled for a while and stopped
under a sky studded with stars.
Don’t forget to catch the lunar eclipse tonight! 🙂
Partial eclipse starts at 12:33 am CST, total eclipse is between 1:41-2:52 am CST and the event is over at 4:01 am CST.