Quarter Moon with Ridgeline. (X.5.2009) Eagle Cap Wilderness . . .
On the road in the American Northwest. [click photo for next . . . ]

THE MOONS OF GALILEO—
a long-line sonnet


Io. Europa. Ganymedes. Callisto.
Messengers of the stars, rough surface of the moon.
Eternal lights, now circling with predictable
Regularity round a new, radical, idea.

Brightest object in a great awakening's night sky.
So much for Dante. So much for Aristotle.
Grand Book of the turnings of the heavenly orbs,
O celestial fact—one of how many yet?—

Silent for centuries that suddenly explodes.
So much for Rome. So much its dogma, its torture.
Even the power of all the marble and gold

In the Universe could not cloud the new lens of truth:
That scripture was wrong, and Copernicus, right.
It's shining above for all to see. Lux eterna, indeed.

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IX.27.2009,
Heather Camp,
Eagle Cap Wilderness

The four Jovian or Galilean Moons—Io, Europa, Ganymedes & Callisto.
Photographs made by the Galileo spacecraft between 1996-97.
First seen with a home-made 8x telescope in 1610.

Upon their discovery, it became clear that the old Ptolemaic view that
the Universe revolved around the Earth was incorrect,
and that the Earth actually was, like Jupiter, a planet
that circled around the Sun.

Featured gallery, mountain water . . . .

Please visit my MOUNTAIN WATER Gallery—some of
the best of my flowform photography w/ a selection of the highest quality
prints & frames . . . [ mouse over for controls / lower right fro full-screen ]

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All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 2011 picture-poems.com
(created: X.22.2009)