Tag: Telescope

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All-Seeing by Scott Edgar

Galaxies can run
But can’t hide – Gravity’s lens
Will bring them to light

by Scott Edgar

This haiku explores the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, where the gravity of a massive object bends light from more distant galaxies behind it. This effect allows astronomers to detect and study galaxies that would otherwise remain hidden — brought into view by gravity itself.

Further reading:

‘Hubble’s Gravitational Lenses’, NASA Science, available: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/universe-uncovered/hubbles-gravitational-lenses/

‘Gravitational Lensing’, European Space Agency Hubble News, available: https://esahubble.org/wordbank/gravitational-lensing/

Author bio:

Scott is a father of five who finds peace in long desert hikes, wildflowers in mountain meadows, and the occasional perfectly shaped rock. He’s a self-published poet with three books out, including a collection of haiku, and a fourth on the way, the host of The Poet (delayed) podcast (available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts here: https://blessed-pine-5317.fireside.fm ), and the co-founder of “Torchlight,” a monthly arts and open mic event in Bountiful, Utah. He also practices law in solo practice, balancing the legal world with a steady pull toward creative life. You can follow Scott on Instagram @poetdelayed.

Read more of Scott’s sciku here.

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eons by Mariya Gusev

path of a comet
orbit eccentricity
classified as love

by Mariya Gusev

Orbital eccentricity is a measure of how much a celestial body’s orbit deviates from a perfect circle. The more “stretched” or flattened an orbit is, the higher the eccentricity, which ranges from 0 to 1, where 0 represents a circular orbit and 1 represents a parabolic orbit (which is not a closed orbit). Eccentricity values between 0 and 1 indicate elliptical orbits, with higher values indicating more elongated ellipses.

Comets often have highly elliptical or near-parabolic orbits because they originate from the Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt, extremely distant regions of the solar system. When these objects fall towards the Sun, their orbits are strongly influenced by the Sun’s gravity, resulting in elongated paths. Interactions with planets, especially Jupiter, can also alter a comet’s orbital eccentricity.

Short-period comets (those with orbital periods less than 200 years) tend to have lower eccentricities than long-period comets, which can take thousands or even millions of years to orbit the Sun.

The sciku above explores the sometimes complex paths of human relationships.

Further reading:

‘Our Solar System’, The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) International Observatory, available: https://www.tmt.org/page/our-solar-system

Author bio:

Mariya Gusev co-edits Haiku Pause, a formal haiku newsletter on Substack. Her work has recently appeared in publications including LEAF, The Heron’s Nest, The Mainichi, Failed Haiku, Trash Panda, Asahi Haikuist Network, Haiku Girl Summer, the Kyoto Haiku Project, and the Akita International Haiku Network, and has won awards and mentions in the Tricycle Magazine haiku challenge, the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku invitational, the Kiyoshi and Kyoko Tokutomi Memorial Haiku Contest 2024, and the Wales Haiku Journal Summer Contest 2025.

Read more sciku by Mariya: ‘the lion’s gate’ and ‘The Sands of Time’.

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The World’s Largest Camera by Martina Matijević

microscale canvas
painting our biography
pixel by pixel

by Martina Matijević

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has unveiled the world’s largest camera, a 3,200-megapixel device designed to capture ultra-high-definition images of the southern sky.

Over the next ten years, this camera will survey the cosmos, producing detailed images that help scientists study celestial phenomena from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies and dark energy. This massive project, involving international collaboration and cutting-edge technology, aims to create the most comprehensive and dynamic map of the universe ever recorded.

Further reading:

‘World’s largest camera just snapped the Universe in 3,200 megapixels’, 2025, ScienceDaily, available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250627095029.htm

‘Vera C. Rubin Observatory Unveils First Sky Images Taken with World’s Largest Camera’, 2025, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), available: https://www.cnrs.fr/fr/presse/lobservatoire-vera-c-rubin-devoile-les-premieres-images-du-ciel-prises-avec-la-plus-grande

Author bio:

Martina Matijević has orbited the Sun 23 times, making her 23 years old in Earth’s timekeeping system. A science enthusiast and poet, her work has appeared in Dadakuku, Haiku Commentary and other. You can discover more of her poetry here: https://tinamatijev.wixsite.com/martina-matijevi

Read more sciku by Martina here.

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The vast universe by Martina Matijević

the vast universe
divorced the Hubble constant
citing lack of space

by Martina Matijević

A recent study confirms that the universe is expanding faster than theoretical models predict, adding more evidence to the ongoing “Hubble tension” crisis.

Researchers measured the Hubble constant using a highly precise distance measurement to the Coma Cluster, revealing a local expansion rate of 76.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec. This new data challenges current cosmological models and suggests that adjustments to our understanding of the universe’s growth may be necessary.

Further reading:

‘Dan Scolnic Shows that the Universe Is Still Full of Surprises’, 2025, Chelini, M.C., Trinity Communications, available: https://trinity.duke.edu/news/dan-scolnic-shows-universe-still-full-surprises

‘The universe is expanding too fast to fit theories: Hubble tension in crisis’, 2025, Duke University, ScienceDaily, available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/01/250117161235.htm

‘The Hubble Tension in Our Own Backyard: DESI and the Nearness of the Coma Cluster’, 2025, Scolnic, D., et al., The Astrophysical Journal Letters, available: https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ada0bd

Author bio:

Martina Matijević has orbited the Sun 23 times, making her 23 years old in Earth’s timekeeping system. A science enthusiast and poet, her work has appeared in 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, View from Atlantis and other. You can discover more of her poetry here: https://tinamatijev.wixsite.com/martina-matijevi

Read more sciku by Martina here.

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The quasar by Martina Matijević

Quasar beams with might,
The angry black hole awakens—
Who switched on the stars?

by Martina Matijević

Astronomers have identified the brightest and fastest-growing quasar ever observed, which is powered by a supermassive black hole. This black hole is rapidly growing at a rate of one solar mass per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole known. The quasar, located 12 billion light-years away, is over 500 trillion times more luminous than the Sun.

Further reading:

‘Brightest and fastest-growing: Astronomers identify record-breaking quasar’, 2024, ESO, ScienceDaily, available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240222122324.htm

‘The accretion of a solar mass per day by a 17-billion solar mass black hole’, 2024, Wolf, C. et al., Nature Astronomy, available: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02195-x

Author bio:

Matijević has orbited the Sun 23 times, making her 23 years old in Earth’s timekeeping system. A science enthusiast and poet, her work has appeared in 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, View from Atlantis and Awen. You can discover more of her poetry here: https://tinamatijev.wixsite.com/martina-matijevi 

Read more sciku by Martina here.

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Cassiopeia A by Scott Edgar

Fusion bestowed life
‘Til your iron heart wrought death
Your ghost is ablaze

by Scott Edgar

This haiku represents the life cycle of a star from its birth through fusion to its death when fusion no longer offsets the pull of its core that’s turned to iron over its life and finally the supernova, its remnant, that results from the star’s instant collapse (if the star was big enough).

This haiku was inspired by this image that I saw of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant:

A false colour image of Cassiopeia A (Cas A) using observations from both the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes as well as the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Image credit: Krause, O. et. al.

Further reading:

‘The Life Cycles of Stars: How Supernovae are Formed’, NASA Educator’s Corner, available: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/educators/lessons/xray_spectra/background-lifecycles.html

Author bio:

Scott Edgar is a father of five amazing, adventurous children, he is an attorney and a poet. He has published two collections of poetry (available here) and is the host of the podcast, The Poet (delayed), which is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts here: https://blessed-pine-5317.fireside.fm You can follow Scott on Instagram @poetdelayed.

Read more of Scott’s sciku here.

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The Universe by Scott Edgar

Hubble found your truth:
Expanding faster, faster
Redshift was the key.

by Scott Edgar

Edwin Hubble used redshift (‘a shift in the light a galaxy emits toward the red end of the visible light spectrum’) to measure the velocity of galaxies and it was thereby determined that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate.

Further reading:

‘Hubble’s Law’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbles_law

Author bio:

I am a lawyer by trade and poet by passion with a conceptual interest in physics and astronomy. I try to get lost in the deserts of the southwestern United States as often as I can. You can follow Scott on Instagram @poetdelayed.

Read more of Scott’s sciku here.

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The deepest shade by Mike Fainzilber

the deepest shade of cold
an ambush
for the light

by Mike Fainzilber

The James Webb Space Telescope takes images of the furthest (hence oldest) and faintest objects in the universe using infrared light. In order to do this without being blinded by infrared radiation from heat emitters (including its’ own components) it has detectors that must be hyper-cooled to temperatures of less than 7 degrees Kelvins (which is approximately -266 C or -447 F).

Further reading:

‘James Webb Space Telescope’, nasa.gov, available: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike here.

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The Dimming Forebear

Gaia. Rooting out
planetary impostures.
K’s false positives.

The Kepler Space Telescope was designed to discover earth-sized planets orbiting around other stars within our region of the Milky Way. Named after German astronomer and mathematician, Johannes Kepler, it was launched in 2009 and retired on the 15th November 2018, the 388th anniversary of the death of its namesake in 1630.

During its lifetime the Kepler Space Telescope discovered 2,662 planets, something it achieved by observing 530,506 stars and looking for drops in their intensity that could indicate a planet passing in front of them. Among these planets were some that were the correct distance from their star and had the right size and atmospheric pressure to support liquid water at the planet’s surface. Other planets discovered orbited two stars instead of one, and ‘hot Jupiters’ – gas giants similar to Jupiter but orbiting in close proximity to their star.

Yet telescopes continue to advance technologically. The Kepler Space Telescope used a photometer to observe the stars in its field of view. The Gaia Space Observatory, launched in 2013, uses a photometer along with an astrometry instrument and a radial-vector spectrometer.

Now research by Niraula et al. (2022) suggests that three or even four of the planets identified by the Kepler Space Telescope aren’t planets at all but are in fact stars. The team was reviewing the planetary data produced by the Kepler Space Telescope and realised that with updated measurements from the Gaia Space Observatory the ‘planets’ Kepler-854b, Kepler-840b, and Kepler-699b were far too large to be planets – each of them two to four times the size of Jupiter. The fourth ‘planet’, Kepler-747b, is 1.8 times the size of Jupiter, at the very top end of observed planets, but its far distance from its star suggests that its more likely to be a star itself than a planet.

Four out of over two and a half thousand discovered planets isn’t a large amount and certainly doesn’t take anything away from the incredible job that the Kepler Space Telescope did during its lifetime. Yet the new findings are hugely important for our knowledge and understanding of planets – by correcting this error the planet dataset is more accurate for those who are studying the population of planets as a whole.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ac4f64

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2M0437b

An ancient baby
in a stellar nursery.
Hot off the star press.

One of the youngest planets ever discovered has been recorded by a team of researchers working with the Subaru and Keck-2 telescopes on the dormant volcano Mauna Kea on the island of Hawai’i. The planet, 2M0437b, was first spotted in 2018 and has taken 3 years of observations to confirm.

Planet 2M0437b. The image was taken with the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea. Credit: Subaru Telescope and Gaidos, et al. (2021)

2M0437b is found, along with its parent star (2M0437), in a stellar ‘nursery’ called the Taurus Cloud and was formed several million years ago, around the same time as when the island it was observed from emerged above the ocean. In fact, the planet is so young it’s still hot from its formation, approximately the temperature of lava: 1400-1500K. The planet is a few times larger than Jupiter and has an orbit around its star that’s around 100 times as far as the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Subaru Telescope and Keck Observatory on Maunakea. Credit: University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy

The young planet can help further build our understanding of how planets form, and challenges some current explanations. As Gaidos et al. (2021) say “the discovery of a super-Jupiter around a very young, very low mass star challenges models of planet formation by either core accretion (which requires time) or disc instability (which requires mass).” Future observations with space telescopes such as the Hubble will help to provide more information about the infant planet and further build our knowledge of the universe.

Original research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08655

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Universal truth by John Norwood

Photograph stitches
Global perspective binding
Universal truth

By John Norwood

This sciku was inspired by the first images of a black hole captured by astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope. The black hole is found at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87, 55 million light years from earth and the image required collaboration between over 200 astronomers.

The poem is a reflection on how an image created by collating observations from various locations all over the earth gives us insight on the physical nature of the universe. 

Image of black hole Messier 87 captured by the Event Horizon Telescope. Credit: EHT Collaboration.

You can read more about the image and find references to the 6 papers here: https://eventhorizontelescope.org/

John Norwood is a Mechanical Engineer working with Carbon, Inc. to revolutionize how things are made. His interests include old houses, yoga, baking, cryptography, and bluegrass music. You can follow him on Twitter under the handle @pryoga

Enjoyed this sciku? Check out some of John’s other work: The answer is none, God may be defined, With enough data, Rivers cut corners, and Squeamish ossifrage.