Sedna (Poetry)
10th August 2006
Distant as the Inuit goddess you were named for -
remote and cold, the aspect of your path's
elliptical, extreme - ten thousand plus
Earth years to complete a lap so vast.
It's small wonder you weren't known for countless eons -
you were so much further off than we could see -
now that optical technology has tracked you,
you've been charted as a new discovery
even though you're old, mysterious, elusive,
(as goddesses and planets used to be)
we've glimpsed your form and something of your nature -
your tiny world is frozen as a pea.
Oblivious of us and our attentions,
you think you're hidden, spinning in the void,
unaware of eyes that probe your secrets,
ignorant how science has deployed
a way to watch you, infiltrate, extract from
the depths of space the data needed when
astronomers weigh up the whys and wherefors -
do you qualify as planet number ten?
On 14th November, 2003, a team of astronomers at Caltech's Palomar Observatory east of San Diego, discovered a frozen world more than 8 million miles from Earth and believed to be the farthest known object within our solar system. Estimates suggest temperatures never rise above 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, making it the coldest known body in the solar system. Named Sedna after the Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic, the planetoid is roughly three-quarters the size of Pluto, which was the last planet to be discovered back in 1930. Since that date, Sedna is the largest object found orbiting the sun - a highly elliptical path that takes the equivalent of 10,500 Earth years to complete.
remote and cold, the aspect of your path's
elliptical, extreme - ten thousand plus
Earth years to complete a lap so vast.
It's small wonder you weren't known for countless eons -
you were so much further off than we could see -
now that optical technology has tracked you,
you've been charted as a new discovery
even though you're old, mysterious, elusive,
(as goddesses and planets used to be)
we've glimpsed your form and something of your nature -
your tiny world is frozen as a pea.
Oblivious of us and our attentions,
you think you're hidden, spinning in the void,
unaware of eyes that probe your secrets,
ignorant how science has deployed
a way to watch you, infiltrate, extract from
the depths of space the data needed when
astronomers weigh up the whys and wherefors -
do you qualify as planet number ten?
On 14th November, 2003, a team of astronomers at Caltech's Palomar Observatory east of San Diego, discovered a frozen world more than 8 million miles from Earth and believed to be the farthest known object within our solar system. Estimates suggest temperatures never rise above 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, making it the coldest known body in the solar system. Named Sedna after the Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic, the planetoid is roughly three-quarters the size of Pluto, which was the last planet to be discovered back in 1930. Since that date, Sedna is the largest object found orbiting the sun - a highly elliptical path that takes the equivalent of 10,500 Earth years to complete.