Looking Up with Don

A five-star rating for a seven-star cluster.

Let’s hear it for the SOHO spacecraft

And the amazing things it has photographed.

With four thousand comets found

By those on the ground

Who scan images...

It happens in 2020 on the 21st of June

When the sun in the sky gets hidden by the moon

The moon's so far away it can't cover the sun totally

So, a ring of fire will be visible locally

There will be no corona visible, at least not in the sky

You need a filter to see this or else you will burn your eye

The Congo is where it is first seen by those without myopia

Then through South Sudan and into Ethiopia

Mid-morning it visits Yemen and slide by Oman's capital city

Filter it and take a look I bet it's mighty pretty

Pakistan sees the sun assume the shape of a ring

Then onto northern India where the eclipse becomes "a thing"

Tibet is next then China, sharing this afternoon view

Something that everyone can look up to

Taiwan gets to jump on then the eclipse sinks into the ocean

A day of emotion, a moon in slow motion, proving Newton's three laws of motion

Look up this Hercules globular

Visible in your binocular

Known by many astronomer

Frequented by the photographer

That's why it is so popular

Look up to the north that's Polaris

Sheltered in place its not careless

Neither setting nor risin'

Stuck above the horizon

With no place to...

There once was a comet named ATLAS

Whose magnitude curve showed flatness

It fragmented and scattered

At the time it most mattered

And it...

It's right to learn Right Ascension

And declination requires your attention

They'll take you to the place

In shallow or deep space

With little to no apprehension

Learn the constellation Corvus

It's not enormous

It represents a crow

Seen better from down below

From Spring into the summer

Then it's gone, what a bummer!

Go out tonight to see Arcturus,

Not as bright or blue as Sirius,

It's in Boötes you see,

Above his left knee,

A sight to behold for the curious