Lowestoft - 'One hell of a starry beach'

 

Image Credit: Kurt Thrust

'Money makes the world go round' (opinion) or 'The world rotates because of the conservation of angular momentum' (science)

Twinkle twinkle big Gemini stars

Joined bottom left by the planet Mars

Up above the beach so bright

Like 'AI' has so arranged the night

They all disappear between dawn and dusk

Sadly the same doesn't apply to Elon Musk

Who even at night can spoil the sky

As his trains of satellites fly brightly by.

The 'Billionaires' have banked all the money without a fight

So the least they can do is leave the rest of  us the night.

George Roberts January 2025

 

A very pretty thing in the Northern Hemisphere night sky

 

The Double Cluster, NGC869 and NGC884  Image Credit{ Kurt Thrust. Data Credit: telescope.org. Open University. Open Observatories.

Starry Night

 

In the Perseus arm of the Milky Way

The ‘Double Cluster’

Provides the lustre

For the astro-photographer at play

 

It is so much younger than other star clusters that astronomers find

Created so long after, it’s more illustrious ‘starry and clustery’ peers

Its estimated age is quoted as being, just over, thirteen million years

NGC869 and NGC884 star clusters, in one focussed view combined

 

Originally catalogued by the ‘Hipparchus the Greek’ two millennia ago in 130 BCE

Rediscovered through a telescope by Bill Herschel, in the early Nineteenth Century

The 'Double Cluster' has both ‘Blue and Red Giant Stars’ when viewed telescopically

 ‘Blue-shifted’, travelling towards us at 38Km per second, but no threat to you or me

George Roberts January 2025

Dialogue

 

'Currently untitled' - George Roberts January 2025 - mixed media digital, photographic and drawing by hand

Every Christmas, whilst reflecting on the 'pudding' I have consumed, I resolve not to miss the Royal Academy Summer Show deadline for entries in early January. This year was no exception and I convinced myself that the £40 entrance fee charged by the RA was value for money. Now I am a very old man, I don't want to sell my art even if someone was sufficiently disturbed to want to buy it and I certainly do not wish to court fame in my twilight years. Consequently, I was somewhat surprised to read the 'Byzantine' rules of engagement posted on the RA's website. It all sounded much too like 'work' than art or whatever it is I do nowadays!

So, I decided to follow previous years and use the RA's topic, 2025 being 'Dialogue', and then exercise my brain and hands to make something. 

The RA usually sets a very wide topic to encourage a variety of responses. I like the sound of the word 'dialogue'  even though as a blogger I have more experience of 'monologue'.

I thought to myself that if I omitted the 'u' from Dialogue I might place three monkeys on an actual log doing what monkeys do best 'ignoring each other whilst engaging with the Earth in the most destructive way possible'.

I got out the 'pencils, pens, brushes, paper and laptopamabob' and then had some 'art fun' resulting in the above picture. I have several working titles:

• 'Dialog'
• 'Myopic'
• 'Fossil fueled'
• 'Other'

'Bubble' the taste of Heaven and Bethnal Green

 

Life seen through ‘Bubble’

There are many vegetables in this world

So why not take the trouble

To collect the veg from your very last meal

And fry yourself some ‘Bubble’

You may poach your asparagus carefully 

To avoid the texture of stubble

You can cook your stew cordon bleu

But it still won’t taste like ‘Bubble’ 

I’ve never heard ‘Bubble’  squeak

Though I’ve ‘mashed it’ to a puddle

You can cream your corn until the cows come home

But it still won’t taste like ‘Bubble’ 

It works so well with any chosen ‘main’

And as ‘a selected side’ you should go double

It eats real well with a ‘smoked salmon bagel’

Because nothing quite tastes like ‘Bubble’.

George Roberts - SS Minnow 09-01-2025

A Crescent Moon and the planet Venus in conjunction to bring in the New Year 2025

 

“I'm not getting it Ted”

"The Moon and Venus looking both bright and leaner.

Following Newtonian directions in an ink black sky.

Bump into one another right next to our verbena.

Is one bigger than the other or just  further away?

Is one very very hot and one very very cold?

Just by looking up and out, I cannot possibly say"

George Roberts