SUPERNOVA FORESHADOWED BY A SONG

The spectacular supernova discovered recently in the constellation Ursa Major appears to have been foreshadowed by a Steven Starjet song of mine titled "Big Dipper." The song goes "Big Dipper's burning down tonight", repeating this key line several times. As you may know, "Big Dipper" is more or less synonymous with Ursa Major.

The song is obviously referring to some spectacular, fiery, destructive natural phenomenon happening there and visible from Earth. That's precisely what this explosive supernova is--the brightest supernova seen in a quarter century. If this supernova happened to ber as close to us as the Sun,it would appear several billions of times of times brighter than our home star.

The song "Big Dipper" is on the cd Love Wheel by Steven Starjet, available at cdbaby website and elsewhere.. "Starjet" is a way of describing the explosive path of matter spurting out from supernovae, gamma-ray bursts and black holes (their accretion disks)--these are the most powerful natural events in the universe.

Here are the song lyrics for the first verse:
After dinner take a walk outside
and look up into the sky
there'll be tears in those pretty green eyes
Big Dipper's burning down tonight
Little Dipper's gonna lose a friend
someone better call the fireman
Big Dipper's burning down tonight.

Multi-Galactic Foliage: a Field Notebook

Multi-Galactic Foliage: a Field Notebook

Linking the terrestrial to the cosmic: the speckled leaves of the cultivated evergreen shrub Aucuba japonica Variegata (aka Gold Dust Plant) bear an astonishing resemblance to deep-field telescopic images (See Pictures). This includes, notably, the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) photograph. That image used a ten-hour exposure over several weeks to peer far into space and found an abundance of galaxies.

The markings on the Gold Dust Plant's leaves are evocative of stars, star clusters, assorted nebulae, galaxies (spiral, elliptical and irregular), comets, even asteroids. Also, the leaf spines can look like meteor streaks or spiral galaxies viewed edge-on. Some of the leaf images even appear to mimic the phenomenon of gravitational lensing. All these effects can be particularly impressive when the leaves are viewed in black & white, as on a photocopier--where it's also possible to enhance the view with motion (which can boost nebulosity).

Native to a large swath of Asia, the characteristic Aucuba japonica "variegated with yellow spots" was described by Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg in his 1783 botany catalog following extensive journeys in the Orient. Consequently, the horticulturalists who bred this attractive ornamental plant to look that way had to predate deep-field astronomy by centuries.

See my (Steve Kearney) book--Cosmic Web--available on Kindle (including Kindle pc).

See the slide show in the next posting of this blog--Celebrity Moon Faces & Multi-Galactic Leaves for examples of the Aucuba leaves phenomenon.