By John C. Mannone
On the passing of the moon in front of the sun as viewed from STEREO
—NASA’s space probes launched October 25, 2006
The sonorous solar wind swooshes fluted notes to my woodwind ear. A rhapsody of solar flares pluck magnetic strings as if a violin, while the timpani of sun sends seismic waves throughout its plasma drum. And trumpet voluntaries herald a perpetual dawn as I float in stereo symphony of space and see the sun see me in the shadow of his eye.
John C. Mannone, nominated three times for the Pushcart, has current and forthcoming work in The Baltimore Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Ayris, Prairie Wolf Press Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Pedestal, Rose Red Review and others. He’s the 2013 Rhysling Chair, the poetry editor for Silver Blade, an adjunct professor of physics, and a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador. Visit The Art of Poetry at jcmannone.wordpress.com.
“The Sun in Stereo” is another astronomy-related poem about STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory). It was the third mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes program (STP). That two-year mission employs two nearly identical space-based observatories – one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind – to provide the first-ever stereoscopic measurements to study the Sun and the nature of its coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. It was launched Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 8:52 p.m. EDT on a Delta II 7925-10L rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The poem was inspired by a NASA report on the Stereo-B spacecraft witnessing the eclipse of the moon appearing as a lunar transit to us. Stereo-A and Stereo-B spacecraft lead and lag the Earth to get stereoscopic images of the sun. It was this Mar 12, 2007 image that did it: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/12mar_stereoeclipse/