Astropoetry to the International Year of Astronomy 2009 2nd quarter.

MOON AND VENUS IN THE MORNING AURORA, 23rd April 2009 photo © Valentin Grigore.

The 2nd quarter issue of Astropoetry to the International Year of Astronomy has just been released.

It includes many photographs, artworks and poetry related to all aspects of astronomy.

Alastair McBeath (UK Vice-President of the International Meteor Organization) reports

April 4 brought another widely-seen fireball to the British Isles,
around 23:32 UT, the magnitude -8/-10 object probably moving roughly south to north over western Wales or the seas nearby. ... May 11 produced a magnitude -9 fireball at 21:35 UT or so ... Being up all the short night in June has much to recommend it (though not the unexpectedly late, patchy frost on June 17/18...), particularly when the crescent Moon starts or ends the night, and still more so when the Moon slips by a planet or two, like the brilliant Venus and the binocular-bright Mars on June 19.

Ion(ut) Moraru contributes HEAVENLY PARTY

The Moon, Mercury and the Pleiades
thought to make a party:

The Moon turned off the light on her surface,
Mercury turned to the Sun,
and the Pleiades exploded:
fireworks!

Alin Iosif wrotes about how he SAW VENUS DURING THE DAYLIGHT

At about 12 o’clock,
my boss asked me again what happened with me.
I tried to show him the reason, but he could find only the Moon.
It was enough:
he didn’t note me as an absent at the job office.

My own contribution is the haiku

something stirs
on one of the moons
of Saturn

Gerald England

John Francis Haines contributes ALONE, AGAIN

After the fury of the tsunami subsided,
We saw the Moon was gone,
Wrenched out of its orbit and flung
Across the sky, to become
Just another minor planet.

There are highlights of an Astro-philosphical debate on Global Warming.

Andrei Dorian Gheorghe in LIMITS writes

Using a lunette,
Galileo showed that
the sky of the fixed stars
is not a stellar limit.

Discovering the planet Uranus,
Herschel showed that
the planet Saturn
is not a planetary limit.

We still have to discover that
love and passion
are not human limits.

Marge Simon writes of THE AMERICAN SOLAR SYSTEM

Pluto remains number nine
in primary schools where
teachers must use manuals
updated time to time.

Astrophysicists may
change their minds...

Arlene Carol is

.. angry with the stars.
They are such liars.

Appearing to be there, when in reality,
They may have gone millennia ago.

Another page is dedicated to VISIONS OF A SUMMER SOLSTICE EXPEDITION, Bucegi Mountains, Romania, 18-21, June 2009.

This has even more photographs of the Milky Way, The Moon-Venus Conjugation, sunsets and many other astronomical phenomena captured amid magnificent scenery.