Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

As coronavirus continues to dominate the news agenda, heres a selection of other stories from around the world.

1. Study shines a light on global insect numbers

Insect populations are not what they used to be. Bugs are declining in number and some species have completely disappeared, representing an ongoing crisis for nature and everything that depends on it.

A new study has looked at data going back to 1925 to get the most comprehensive picture yet of whats happening. While land insects are in a slow decline, freshwater insects are seeing a slow uptick, with an annual increase of about 1%, or potentially 38% growth in the next 30 years.

The scientists dont know the exact reason for these trends, but point to habitat destruction as the most likely cause of declines of insects on land and effective protections in place for those in freshwater.

2. Pentagon releases videos of UFOs

The perennial quest for evidence of UFOs is back in the news, with the release by the US Department of Defense of three declassified videos showing what it describes as unexplained aerial phenomena.

The videos, which had previously been leaked, were filmed by US Navy fighter pilots and show objects hovering, spinning and flying across the Pacific Ocean. With the release, Pentagon sources confirmed the videos are genuine, but stop short of confirming stories on social media linking the UFO to alien spacecraft.

3. Hubble telescope marks 30th birthday with amazing starbirth picture

After three decades in orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope continues to capture stunning images of the universe, recently beaming back an incredible picture of a star-forming region 163,000 light years away from Earth.

The image, according to NASA nicknamed the "Cosmic Reef" because it resembles an undersea world, shows a giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbour (NGC 2020). At the centre of NGC 2014 is a group of stars each 10 to 20 times bigger than the sun.

4. Last year was Europes warmest on record

Globally, 2019 was the second warmest on record, the BBC reports, but for Europeans it was the hottest ever.

Europe has seen average temperatures over the past five-year period climb 2C over pre-industrial times, which is twice as high as the 1C global average and exceeds the limit set by the Paris climate agreement.

Agricultural losses are on an unimaginable scale.

Image: Reuters/Baz Ratner

5. Extremely alarming locust infestations in east Africa

Food supplies are under threat in east Africa as swarms of desert locusts infest the region. Gathering in countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, a single swarm can contain up to 150 million insects with a range of 150 kilometres each day, decimating enough food to feed tens of thousands of people.

Called extremely alarming by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the new generation of locusts leave many communities in their path facing an uncertain future. With some countries in the region already on the brink of starvation, looming food shortages could lead to a humanitarian disaster.

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The non-coronavirus stories you might have missed - World Economic Forum

Hubble: The Wonders of Space Revealed9pm, BBC Two

In orbit since April 1990 and having travelled more than 6.5bn kilometers around Earth, the Hubble telescope has done more than perhaps any other scientific experiment to reveal the extent of our universe. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, this fascinating special tells the story of the telescopes launch through a series of dangerous missions, as well as showing its beautifully intricate and mostly unbelievable high-resolution images of space. Ammar Kalia

Its fossils galore in this special examining the rise of our mammalian species in the wake of the asteroid-related destruction of the dinosaurs 66m years ago. We see how the discovery of new fossils in Colorado might hold the secret to our gradual evolution alongside other plants and animals. AK

Its a dream team of celebrity complainers this week. Changing Rooms supremo Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen brings his famous flair to Joes feud with a parcel delivery company and Anneka Rice joins Joe on a search for the UKs disappearing cash machines. Together, theyre like the Avengers. Ellen E Jones

The final episode of this series sees Rob Bell follow the Waverley route from Edinburgh to Carlisle, which closed in 1969. Its closure caused an uproar from residents and now it looks on the verge of coming back as public petitions have made the government reassess. AK

This seasons switch from a glitzy studio set to being beamed from host Nish Kumars spare room has stripped the Mash Report of its Day Today-style absurdity and put a spotlight on some slightly patchy writing. But Kumar and his game cast can still be trusted to squeeze out as many laughs as possible. Graeme Virtue

Jackies in hospital but with the weekly meal in jeopardy, Tracy-Ann Obermans Aunty Val steps up. Sadly, her cooking is suboptimal and shes in a hurry thanks to a date with a sex robot she has met online. Accordingly, the family could do without any interventions from Jim. Still funny, albeit predictably. Phil Harrison

Life of Crime, 11.20pm, BBC TwoJennifer Aniston draws on the slick comic timing of all those Friends episodes to lead Daniel Schechters fun-filled adaptation of Elmore Leonards The Switch. Shes Mickey, the socialite wife of slimy crook Frank (Tim Robbins) who has no intention of paying up when she is held for ransom by bumbling kidnappers Mos Def and John Hawkes. Paul Howlett

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TV tonight: celebrating the Hubble telescope - The Guardian

The distant planet of Fomalhaut b located 25 light-years away from Earth was first caught insight in 2004 and 2006 as a bright, cool dot moving briskly across the sky. Ten years later, that dot suddenly disappeared.

Fomalhaut b, one of the first exoplanets discovered in visible light by NASA's Hubble Telescope disappeared from the night sky in 2014, what could have happened to this planet and where did it go?

Daily Mailhas reported that one of the first planet discovered outside of our solar system is found to be not a planet at all but a giant dust cloud that was formed from the aftermath of two 125-mile icy comets colliding into each other, according to a study.

More than a decade past when the Fomalhaut b, a Saturn-like planet found in the Fomalhaut star system 25 light-years from Earth, was discovered through NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. However, the University of Arizona claims that this was actually not a planet at all.

The image that the Hubble Space Telescope captured was an expanding cloud of fine dust particles shortly after the collision. The team said that an event like this happens once every 200,000 years, and sheds light on how the planets evolve.

Dr. Andras Gaspar of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona, and the study lead author said that it is exceedingly rare to witness such major discovery. He believes that the observation was made at the right place and at the right time to have witnessed such an unlikely event.

The collision is thought to have happened in the constellation of Pisces Austrinus, about 11 billion miles from the Fomalhaut star which is hotter and 15 times brighter than our star. The solar system of Fomalhaut is said to be the ultimate lab test for how planets destroy each other, said George Rieke of the Steward Observatory.

Read Also: NASA's Juno Space Probe Captures New Breathtaking Images of Jupiter That Looks Like A Stunning Piece of Art

Both Gaspar and Rieke believe that the collision occurred not too long before it was first discovered in 2004 given all the available data. Now, the Hubble cannot detect the debris anymore. The dust cloud is made up of very small particles that is a 5thof the diameter of a human hair.

When Fomalhaut b was first announced in 2008, it was seen clearly and seemed to have a massive ring around it. The characteristics of Fomalhaut b seemed unusual for an exoplanet that should be too small to be seen from Earth.

Moreover, it also does not have any detectable infrared signatures that are expected from a young and bright planet that should be warm enough to shine. Gaspar said that upon analyzing all available archives on Fomalhaut, it reveals that the planet-sized object may never have existed at all.

When finally in 2014, scientists discovered that the planet discovered by the Hubble had vanished. There are some evidences also showing that the object continuously fades over time, something unlikely to happen for a planet.

"Fomalhaut b was doing things a bona fide planet should not be doing," Gaspar said.

The researchers published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read More: NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Possibly Found Earth 2.0

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First Exoplanet Discovered by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope Suddenly Disappeared, Where Could It Possibly Go - Science Times

Scientists have revisited one of the most iconic images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, revealing incredible details in infrared light.

The image, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula, was taken by Hubble in 1995. The elephant trunk-shaped features in this iconic Hubble image are star-forming regions made up of incredible, monolithic structures of interstellar dust and gas.

This region is located about 6,500 to 7,000 light-years from Earth and is part of the larger region known as the Eagle Nebula, which is a stellar nursery in the constellation Serpens. While the "pillars" stretch about 4 to 5 light-years long, the Eagle Nebula spans a vast 55-70 light-years.

Related: The most amazing Hubble Space Telescope discoveriesMore: Another breathtaking Hubble view of the Pillars Of Creation

The famous image of the "Pillars of Creation," which NASA originally released in 1995, shows the region as seen in visible light, which is the range on the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that the human eye can see. But, in this new view of the "pillars," researchers instead showed them through infrared light, which can pierce through thick clouds to reveal what is lurking behind dust and gas in the foreground.

This new image offers a striking new perspective of what the region looks like within those thick clouds of dust and gas. In this infrared view, you can see a smattering of bright and brilliant stars, even baby stars in this star-forming alcove in the cosmos.

As opposed to Hubble's 1995 image of the region, the "pillars" in this infrared image appear faint and ghostly and are not as prominent as they were in the visible light image. They almost look like shadows in the background, taking a backseat to the brilliant stars in the foreground.

The Eagle Nebula was discovered in 1745 by Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chseaux. The nebula has an apparent magnitude of 6 (magnitude in astronomy is used as a measure of brightness) and can be observed from Earth with smaller, standard telescopes relatively easily, though larger telescopes would be required to spot the "pillars." The nebula is easiest to spot in the summertime in July.

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Behold! See the Hubble telescope's iconic 'Pillars of Creation' view in infrared - Space.com

Quasar tsunamis discovered by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope erupt in the most energetic outflows of material ever seen. This outpouring of energy wrecks havoc with galaxies in which these enigmatic objects reside, altering the evolution of these families of stars.

Quasars are energetic cores of galaxies, composed of supermassive black holes fed by vast quantities of gas, stars, and planets. These bodies are capable of emitting a thousand times as much energy as the entire galaxies which host the bodies.

These quasar winds push material away from the center of the galaxy, accelerating gas and dust at speeds approaching a few percent of the speed of light. The pressure pushes aside material which could otherwise collapse to form newstars, making stellar formation more difficult, reducing the number of new stars formed. This new study shows this process is more widespread than previously believed, altering star formation throughout entiregalaxies.

These outflows are crucial for the understanding of galaxies formation. They are pushing hundreds of solar masses of material each year. The amount of mechanical energy that these outflows carry is up to several hundreds of times higher than the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, Nahum Arav of Virginia Tech stated.

As the outflow blasts into interstellar material, it heats the medium to millions of degrees, setting thegalaxyalight in X-rays. Energy pours out through the galaxy, producing a fireworks show for anyone capable of seeing it.

Youll get lots of radiation first in X-rays and gamma rays, and afterwards it will percolate to visible and infrared light. Youd get a huge light show, like Christmas trees all over the galaxy, Arav explained.

I saw the whole universe laid out before me, a vast shining machine of indescribable beauty and complexity. Its design was too intricate for me to understand, and I knew I could never begin to grasp more than the smallest idea of its purpose. But I sensed that every part of it, from quark to quasar, was unique and in some mysterious way significant. R. J. Anderson

This study could explain several mysteries in astronomy and cosmology, including why the size of galaxies is related to the mass of thesupermassive black holesat their centers. It may also explain why so few massive galaxies are seen throughout the Cosmos.

Both theoreticians and observers have known for decades that there is some physical process that shuts off star formation in massive galaxies, but the nature of that process has been a mystery. Putting the observed outflows into our simulations solves these outstanding problems in galactic evolution, saidJeremiah Ostriker, a cosmologist at Columbia and Princeton universities not involved with this current study. Below is a 3D animation video ofa quasar by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Outflows from quasars were studied by astronomers using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) attached to theHubble Space Telescope, the only instrument capable of carrying out the needed observations in ultraviolet wavelengths.

A second outflow measured by researchers on this study increased its speed from 69 million kilometers (43 million miles) per hour to 74 million KPH (46 million MPH) over a period of three years. Models suggest that such outflows should have been common in the earlyUniverse. Researchers on this study believe this material will continue to accelerate for the foreseeable future.

Analysis of the data was published in the journalAstrophysical Journal Supplements.

This article was originally published onThe Cosmic Companionby James Maynard, an astronomy journalist, fan of coffee, sci-fi, movies, and creativity. Maynard has been writing about space since he was 10, but hes still not Carl Sagan. The Cosmic Companionsmailing list/podcast. You can read this original piecehere.

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Hubble telescope discovers Galaxy-ripping quasar tsunamis in space - The Next Web

NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope is about to celebrate 30 years in space, and Science Channel will mark the anniversary in style.

The network has produced a two-hour special called "Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery," which will premiere next Sunday (April 19) at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

The documentary "will tell the remarkable story of how the Hubble telescope was created by the leading engineers and scientists of our time," Science Channel representatives wrote in a statement. "It will also include interviews with space's most notable names, including astronauts Michael Massimino, Kathryn Thornton, Story Musgrave, Steven Smith and John Grunsfeld."

Related: The most amazing Hubble Space Telescope discoveries

All of those NASA spaceflyers have first-hand experience with Hubble, which launched to Earth orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990 with a flaw in its primary mirror. (The shuttle deployed Hubble a day later.)

Spacewalking astronauts fixed the mirror problem in December 1993 and repaired or upgraded the powerful scope on four subsequent servicing missions, in 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2009.

This hard work was a great investment, keeping Hubble going great guns far beyond its planned 15-year operational life.

The telescope has transformed astronomers' understanding of the cosmos in numerous ways during its long life (which isn't over yet). In the late 1990s, for example, Hubble observations showed that the universe's expansion is accelerating, a surprising find that led astrophysicists to postulate the existence of a mysterious repulsive force called dark energy.

And Hubble's contributions extend far beyond the scientific sphere: The telescope's spectacular photos give regular folks around the world frequent tastes of the wonder and beauty that pervade the cosmos.

"Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery" will show you many of those amazing images and give you a much better idea of how they came to be created, Science Channel representatives said.

"This behind-the-scenes special will also give viewers an intimate look like never before at Hubbles incredible journey from its earliest conception in 1923, to its five iconic [servicing] missions spanning from 1993 to 2009," they wrote in the statement. "It will also spotlight the groundbreaking insights that Hubble has revealed about the planet as well as the broader solar system and beyond."

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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'Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery' to premiere on Science Channel April 19 (exclusive video) - Space.com

It came from beyond our solar system. But the sun wasnt content to let it leave in peace, or in one piece.

Comet 2I/Borisov, an Eiffel Tower-sized clod of dust and ice, plunged into our solar system last fall, exhaling vapor as it buzzed nearest to our sun around Christmas. This alien visitor must have formed around a distant and unknown star.

It slumbered as it crossed the frozen gulf of interstellar space. But now, suddenly, the sleeper is awake and kicking. To the simultaneous delight and frustration of the worlds astronomers, Borisov has sloughed off at least one fragment over the last few weeks.

The action began last month March 2020, of all times when the Hubble telescope spotted at least one chunk of the comet breaking off like a calving iceberg. That clump has since fizzed away into nothingness.

These fireworks offer astronomers a unique glimpse at the exposed guts of this interstellar object, just the second humanity has ever spotted. The first visitor from another star system, 2017s 1I/Oumuamua, behaved like an inert hunk of rock. This one has now cracked open its gooey center and we can see whats inside, said Michele Bannister, a planetary astronomer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Astronomers had hoped, even predicted, that Borisov might crack up this spring while heading back out of the solar system to once again sojourn among the stars. But the first signs it was stirring came in early March, right as the coronavirus pandemic ramped up. Thats when ground-based astronomers in Poland spotted the comet suddenly brighten, even though it shouldve been dimming as it got farther from the sun.

Several competing teams of scientists had already booked coveted slots to study the comet over the next few months with Hubble. Spurred by the news out of Poland, they rushed to move up their own observations, hoping to catch the comet acting up.

The clincher came on March 30, when a group led by David Jewitt at the University of California, Los Angeles, downloaded a fresh image taken by Hubble. Instead of just a circular blob that would show the comets nucleus, they saw an elongated shape, suggesting a smaller fragment of the nucleus had split off and was slowly drifting away from the main object. Its like a little lug nut dropped off your car, Dr. Jewitt said.

Another team, led by Bryce Bolin at Caltech, said theyve spotted an earlier clump breaking off in Hubble images, too, possibly corresponding to a piece that could have caused Borisovs sudden brightening in early March. Im hoping that this object is going to be producing more fragments, Dr. Bolin said, but not completely, catastrophically break up into a million pieces in a cloud of dust.

In any normal month, huge mountaintop telescopes in Chile and Hawaii would have already begun swiveling toward the comet, putting the interstellar visitor under the astronomy worlds equivalent of 24-hour surveillance. Those telescopes would let astronomers track Borisovs brightness from night to night and scan for chemical elements now spewing from its insides.

Of course, the last month wasnt normal. Most observatories are now shuttered to protect employees from the pandemic.

The classic phrase is that comets are like cats, Dr. Bannister said. They dont do what you expect. Or what you want.

Even with Hubble alone, watching a fragment split off and drift from Borisov should help astronomers understand the size of the comets original nucleus and how tightly it was bound together, and then compare those properties with bodies formed in our own solar system.

Other research will focus on why Borisov put on a show and why now. One possible explanation for the comets breakup is that after months of sunlight on the surface, buried pockets of volatile ice had warmed enough to suddenly explode.

Another hypothesis holds that gas sprayed off the comet like the wayward nozzle of a fire extinguisher, spinning Borisov in space. Once the comet was rotating fast enough, it centrifuged itself into more than one piece that could escape the original nucleus meager gravitational pull. Dr. Jewitt, seeking to prove this model, is hoping future observations will clock the speed of the spin.

Hubble images taken on April 3 show that the chunk Dr. Jewitt spotted seems to have already faded away, said Quanzhi Ye, an astronomer at the University of Maryland.

More fragments might fall off, Dr. Ye said. If I have to say anything, Id guess that its not done yet.

Borisovs timing has offered astronomers everything from consternation to a welcome distraction. Theres something comforting, in a way, that celestial events still continue to happen even as our lives on Earth have been upended, Dr. Bannister said.

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It Came From Outside Our Solar System and Now Its Breaking Up - The New York Times

Mike Massimino has experienced the greatest isolation a human being could ever know: the solitude of space, hundreds of miles above humanity. A NASA astronaut for 18 years, Massimino spent about a month total sheltering in placeor, more accurately, sheltering in spaceaboard two separate missions on the space shuttle, donning a suit and stepping out into the ether to repair the Hubble telescope, and taking in the greatest view a human could ever know.

But it was isolation, nonetheless. Like many of you, Im sheltering in place right now, says Massimino, who is currently back on Earth. Im inside my home, and its kind of like being inside of a spaceship again. We Earthlings may have the luxury of gravity and grocery stores and fresh air, but you might be feeling more like an astronaut right now than you know. So take it from Massimino: Youre more in control of your isolation than you know.

First of all, he advises, reach out to mission control, and be a mission control for someone else. In other words, let others know if you need help, and be available to help them as well. On one spacewalk to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, Massimino recalls, he ended up stripping a bolt on a science instrument while trying to remove a handle. I thought it was game over, he says. I felt like were never going to solve this. Ive created this horrible problem and were never going to find out if theres life anywhere else in the universe and everyone will blame me. But Massimino took his problem to mission control down on Earth, and they suggested a blunt solution: Just give the handle a good yank. And indeed, it snapped off. Problem solved.

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Reach out, be the person that people can call for help, Massimino says. Be their mission control. And dont forget that your mission control is there to help you as well. If astronauts can email their loved ones from space (fun fact: Massimino was the first to tweet from space), you can certainly call Grandma.

Also, like astronauts, you need exercise right nowbadly. Up in space, microgravity doesnt give the astronauts opportunities to work their muscles, so they use special treadmills and weight machines. If youre stuck in your house, you need exercise to keep your body and mind in order. And while youre out there, take in the scenery. (Six feet away from any other human, of course.) It cant compare to the view from orbit, but itll shake you out of the mundanity of looking at the same walls and furniture all day.

For more tips from Massimino about how to make the most of isolation, including the importance of pursuing meaningful distractions (emphasis on meaningful), check out our video above.

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Astronaut Mike Massimino on How to Make the Most of This Isolation - WIRED

NASAs Hubble space telescope has helped astronomers spot quasar tsunamis ripping across galaxies.

Described as the most energetic outflows ever witnessed in the universe, they emanate from quasars, distant bright objects in space that are similar to stars. The outflows tear across interstellar space like tsunamis, wreaking havoc on the galaxies in which the quasars live, said NASA, in a statement.

Quasars contain supermassive black holes fueled by infalling matter that can shine 1,000 times brighter than their host galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars, NASA explained. As the black hole devours matter, hot gas encircles it and emits intense radiation, creating the quasar. Winds, driven by blistering radiation pressure from the vicinity of the black hole, push material away from the galaxy's center. These outflows accelerate to breathtaking velocities that are a few percent of the speed of light.

NASAS HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE SPOTS 'GALACTIC TRAFFIC JAM'

Astronomers were able to study 13 quasar outflows, measuring the incredible speed of gas being accelerated by the quasar wind. This was achieved by looking at spectral "fingerprints" of light from the glowing gas.

An illustration of a distant galaxy with an active quasar at its center. (Credits: NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted [STScI]))

Aside from measuring the most energetic quasars ever observed, the team also discovered another outflow accelerating faster than any other, scientists said, in the statement. It increased from nearly 43 million miles per hour to roughly 46 million miles per hour in a three-year period. The scientists believe its acceleration will continue to increase over time.

Hubble continues to shed new light on space. The telescope, for example, recently spotted a galactic traffic jam more than 60 million light-years away.

77-YEAR-OLD AMATEUR ASTRONOMER HELPS MAKE STUNNING DISCOVERY

A light-year, which measures distance in space,equalsabout 6 trillion miles.

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A joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency, the Hubble telescope has captured a host of beautiful images since its launch in 1990.In 2012, NASAreleasedan image of a double nucleus in the Andromeda Galaxy that was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. A Hubble imagereleasedin 2014 showed a double nucleus in spiral galaxy Messier 83.

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NASAs Hubble space telescope spots quasar tsunamis ripping across galaxies - Fox News

Antidotes to Fear of Death

Sometimes as an antidoteTo fear of death,I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,I suck them from the quenching darkTil they are all, all inside me,Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myselfInto a universe still young,Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,The light of all the not yet starsDrifting like a bright mist,And all of us, and everythingAlready thereBut unconstrained by form.

And sometime its enoughTo lie down here on earthBeside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fieldsOf our discarded skulls,Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,Thinking: whatever left these husksFlew off on bright wings.

In 1986, Rebecca Elson (1960-1999) was a young Canadian astronomer who had begun a post-doctoral research fellowship examining Hubble telescope data at Princeton. In the essay From Stones to Stars, which concludes her posthumously published and single poetry collection A Responsibility to Awe, Elson contrasted the discomforts of working in such a male-dominated environment with her pleasure in the openness and congeniality of Princetons poetry community. But she went on to add a significant qualification, that the discussions there were also a reminder that, although I loved the unlimited licence to invent, I also loved the sense of exploring not an inner, but an outer world, that was really there, in some objective sense. This weeks poem seems to accommodate this dilemma, by working on a borderline between inventive poetic figures and more objective description, while never fully letting go of the former.

The opening lines are simple and striking. The speaker doesnt merely lie on her back to look up at the night sky, as any non-astronomer might do, but, childlike, she eats the stars. She goes on to tell us how she eats them: she sucks them, and finds the taste pepper hot and sharp. This is purposefully visceral and immediate, and a summons to the child star-lover in herself, a tuning-in to the old excitement before academia took over.

She continues the nutrition metaphor with the word stir in the third stanza, but a change of approach is heralded as were invited to follow her into the early universe: No outer space, just space. And now poetic diction is reduced, the whole imaginative process more restrained. The biblical creation narrative is recalled, when the earth was without form, and void yet the description, especially that of the not yet stars, feels logical and objective.

The alternative to stargazing and imagining, proposed in the fifth stanza, is To lie down here on earth / Beside our long ancestral bones Because of the placing of the conjunction in the first line And sometimes its enough the activity is subtly emphasised. Its at least as important as looking up at the stars to be aware of the horizontal neighbourhood, that of our long ancestral bones. The pun on long is beautifully judged here.

Elson doesnt refute biological science. Dead matter is transformed, but kept interestingly visible in the reference to cobble fields / Of our discarded skulls. Its an imaginative truce with fact, followed by speculation, and recourse to the soul-as-butterfly myth. Inevitably, the bright wings connect us to the bright mist in stanza four, as if a new creation might transpire from death.

Antidotes to Fear of Death is undated, and may have been written before the poet was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the disease from which she died at the age of 39. Its the kind of intense engagement with death that an imaginative young writer might make, regardless of personal circumstance. As an act of generosity, like so much of Elsons work, it includes readers by its imaginative accessibility and universal theme. Although antidote is a strong word, the poem has some power to challenge the individuals fear of extinction with a wider, less egocentric focus on space and time. It lies just outside religious consolation, and just outside scientific detachment. Imagination is all we have to suggest alternative universes, a quality required for survival, for poetry, and for the hypotheses of science.

A Responsibility to Awe was first published in 2001, and was reissued in 2018 as a Carcanet Classic. To read Elsons brave and gentle work during the current pandemic crisis is to take a fresh breath, and to see a little farther.

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Poem of the week: Antidotes to Fear of Death by Rebecca Elson - The Guardian