This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 1.6 million views since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.
Showing posts with label Alan Stern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Stern. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

“The New Horizon” by Christopher Fox Graham

I performed two poems at Lowell Observatory's annual I ❤ Pluto Festival Saturday, Feb. 15, at the Orpheum Theatre. The featured guests were Adam Nimoy, a television director and son of the late actor Leonard Nimoy; Alan Stern, Ph.D., Principal Investigator of the New Horizons Mission to Pluto; comet-hunter David Levy, who co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (D/1993 F2) with Flagstaff scientists Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker.
This was the first of the two poems I wrote for the event. It pairs as a trilogy with my 2012 poem "Dear Pluto" about the planet and my 2016 poem "Clyde Tombaugh" about the planet's discoverer, who first viewed the planet from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.

Dr. Alan Stern emailed me after the I ❤ Pluto Festival:
"Dear Christopher,
Thanks a bunch for these, they are wonderful pieces of art and I am grateful for you sending them so I can share in our team.
Hope to see you again in Flag someday (and hopefully before Pluto’s 100th)!
Very best,
-Alan"

“The New Horizon”
by Christopher Fox Graham

amid the infinite dark
400 billion points of light burn —
93 million miles from one unremarkably ordinary star,
the first snap-crack of amino acids
move and grow, 
seeking something beyond 
the first horizon 
of its salt pond tide pool

the drive to expand, experience, explore
written at inception into RNA
the hero’s journey inscribed in all cells since
we’re here, now, because “here” wasn’t enough

our ancestors sought what’s over next horizon
the first fish to set foot on land 
the first therapsid to walk upright
the first mammal to emerge in the shadow of the last dinosaur
the first primate to step onto the savannah
the first human family to leave the only tribe 
to start a new one
the first caravan to cross the desert
the first ship to leave the safety of shore
the first astronaut to lose sight of the Earth
beyond the edge of the dark side of the Moon
mystery, adventure, fate, fortune and future
are always over the hopeful horizon 

"Earthrise," taken on Dec. 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders

this here, this sphere of home, 
this pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam
is all we know, every human being who ever was, 
every hunter, forager, peasant, king, inventor, explorer, 
"superstar", "supreme leader," hero, coward, 
dreamer, destroyer, saint, sinner, genocide and miracle
every mother and father, broken heart and forever love story,
every living thing 
from that first cell
to your hopeful child
is here, 
on this grain of sand in the dark
the breadth of my palm from our singular sun

"The Pale Blue Dot"

but out there are more worlds with unseen horizons
so we peer into the dark
unafraid of what we may find 
cast out our messages in bottles
to send photos of the spheres 
and their untouched horizons back home
so we can wonder at their beauty



but out along the edge
beyond our brother Mars,
the great Jupiter 
and ringed Saturn
fraternal twins Neptune and Uranus
is the ninth horizon
discovered by a Kanas boy 
who called Flagstaff home

Clyde Tombaugh [Feb. 4, 1906-Jan. 17, 1997]

that far out, the sun that made life possible here
is a point of light,
but barely much more
though it holds Pluto in orbit like a prodigal son

astronomers-turned-archers 
sent New Horizons to see Clyde Tombaugh’s discovery —
we sent a piece of him, too


his ashes in a capsule 
no bigger 
than a thumb

132524 APL (2002 JF56)



it waved hello to asteroid 132524 APL,
swam through the swirling orbits of Jupiter’s 95 moons
like a sober freshman navigating a nightclub dance floor
with a sweaty fake ID, 
hoping not to be noticed,


popping paparazzi photos 
of Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa

Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto

then, hooked by the weight, 
turned left, 
passing the orbits of the outer planets
to the final horizon
to this 
mote of dust

New Horizons passes through the Pluto system at about 30,800 mph, passing within 40,000 miles of Pluto on Monday, July 13, 2015.

in the blink of an eye
Robin Hood could loose an arrow into a bullseye
and send a second
to split the first at a 100 paces

but teams of technicians on earth
could split the orbit
of Pluto and Charon
at 30,000 miles per hour
from 2 billion miles away 
closer than Nix, Kerberos, Hydra and Styx
had ever been


We named everything — 

maculae after the gods of death 
who rule permanent horizons 
Cadejo, Meng Po and Morgoth

fluctus after those 
who journeyed to the underworlds 
of a dozen mythologies,
Mpobe, Dioynsus, Xanthius

plains after satellites 
Sputnik, Rosetta, and Ranger, Chandrayaan, Hiten and Yutu 
who broke the bonds of earth,


for the dreamers uncontent to be held back by the old horizons
we named the hills and mountains 
Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, 
Zheng He, Bessie Coleman, Muhammad al-Idrisi,
Junko Tabei, 
Juan Sebastián Elcano,
Thor Heyerdahl and the Wright brothers

craters and regions after those 
who stared into the abyss
Percival Lowell, Viktor Safronov, Michael Belton

free from nationality, 
all sharing a singular horizon


we saved the welcoming heart 
for Tombaugh
the boy whose heart
kept New Horizons warm in the dark
warm, and fundamentally human


because “here” was never enough
beyond Pluto
we sought one last horizon at Arrokoth 
the "Ultima Thule" on our map

Arrokoth, informally known as Ulitma Thule.

now 4.6 billion miles from a lost horizon
it will never see again
is our message in a bottle
proof that “here” is never enough
for a cell or a species

our New Horizons are infinite

Departure shot of Pluto by New Horizons, showing Pluto's atmosphere backlit by the Sun. consists mainly of nitrogen, with minor amounts of methane and carbon monoxide. The blue color is close to what a human eye would have seen, and is caused by layers of haze in the atmosphere 






Notes:

"Earthrise" was taken on Dec. 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders at 16:39:39.3 UTC. The Apollo 8 crew consisted of Anders, Frank Borman and James Lovell. Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8's historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts:


Anders used a highly modified Hasselblad 500 EL camera with an electric drive. The camera had a simple sighting ring, rather than the standard reflex viewfinder, and was loaded with a 70 mm film magazine containing custom Ektachrome film developed by Kodak. Anders had been photographing the lunar surface with a 250 mm lens; the lens was subsequently used for the Earthrise images. While the image is best known with the moon horizon on the bottom of the image and the Earth rising above, it was actually shot as it appears here, in line with the lunar north pole. It was later rotated 95 degrees to place the moon horizon at the bottom of the photo.



"The Pale Blue Dot" is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan's book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space," in which he wrote: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," which is sampled and paraphrased in the poem.


132524 APL (2002 JF56): The two "spots" in this image are two images of asteroid 132524 APL (2002 JF56) taken on June 11, bottom, at a distance of 3.36 million kilometers, and June 12, 2006, the top, taken at 1.34 million kilometers. The asteroid is about 2.5 kilometers in diameter.

Galilean Moons: The montage of Jupiter's four large and diverse Galilean satellites as seen by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on the New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter in late February 2007. The four moons are, from left to right: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The images have been scaled to represent the true relative sizes of the four moons and are arranged in their order from Jupiter.

Robin Hood: If the 4.8 billion-kilometer distance to Pluto when New Horizons passed through was reduced to 100 paces (200 to 400 feet depending on stride, or ~100 yards, i.e., the length of a football field), the 40,000-mile (64,373 km) distance between Pluto and New Horizons when it passed within 40,000 miles would be 1.22 millimeters. On that scale, the 2.7-meter New Horizons probe would be 2 nanometers, smaller than the diameter of a strand of DNA.

486958 Arrokoth: (2014 MU69) or Ultima Thule is a trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt object. Arrokoth became the farthest and most primitive object in the Solar System visited by a spacecraft whenNew Horizons conducted a flyby on Jan. 1, 2019. It is made of two lobes, a smaller "walnut" and a larger "pancake." The two conjoined lobes indicate Arrokoth used to be two separate bodies that stuck together after a gentle, slow-speed collision. The Latin "Ultima Thule" means "farthest Thule," a semi-mythical place in Greek and Roman mythology located in the far north, usually an island, possibly Iceland, the British Isles, the Shetland Isles or the Orkney Islands.



Sunday, February 16, 2025

Lowell Observatory honored me with an asteroid: 29722 Chrisgraham (1999 AQ23) after the I ❤ Pluto Festival

My friend, Kevin Schindler, presenting me with the map of the orbit of asteroid 29722 Chrisgraham (1999 AQ23) on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025. Kevin first invited me to perform at I ❤ Pluto Festival in 2023, then again in 2024. This year, he told me Alan Stern, Ph.D. from the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and Adam Nimoy were going to be the guests and asked if I wanted to write two poems, so I wrote two new pieces "The New Horizon" and "The Most Human," which I debuted at the festival. (Note Kevin's custom Pluto tie).


Arizona State Rep. Justin Wilmeth [District 2], Astronomy magazine editor-in-chief David Eicher, comet hunter David Levy and Christopher Fox Graham at Lowell Observatory with the map of the orbit of asteroid 29722 Chrisgraham (1999 AQ23) on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025.

I performed two poems at Lowell Observatory's annual I ❤ Pluto Festival last night at the Orpheum Theatre.  I wrote two new pieces "The New Horizon," about Leonard Nimoy and his role as Spock, and "The Most Human,"  about the New Horizon mission to Pluto.

The featured guests were Adam Nimoy, a television director and son of the late actor Leonard Nimoy; Alan Stern, Ph.D., Principal Investigator of the New Horizons Mission to Pluto; comet-hunter David Levy, who co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (D/1993 F2) with Flagstaff scientists Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 famously broke apart in July 1992 and its pieces slammed into Jupiter in July 1994, the first collision of two of extraterrestrial Solar System objects that was direct observable.

Adam Nimoy speaking about his father, Leonard Nimoy and his new book, "The Most Human: Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy."

Adam Nimoy, David Levy, Alan Stern, Ph.D., and David Eicher, from left, on stage at the Orpheum Theater in Flagstaff.
Alan Stern, Ph.D., answering an audience question about the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Nimoy, Stern and Levy participated in a discussion on how scientific exploration inspires humanity moderated by David Eicher, editor-in-chief of Astronomy magazine.

Adam Nimoy and Christopher Fox Graham after I ❤ Pluto Festival giving the Vulcan Salute

Alan Stern and Christopher Fox Graham after I ❤ Pluto Festival giving the Pluto Salute

After the event, a number of us -- Nimoy, Levy, Eicher, my good friend Lowell Observatory Historian and Public Information Officer Kevin Schindler, Chief Marketing Officer Cody Half-Moon and Arizona State Rep. Justin Wilmeth [District 2], who wrote the bill the named Pluto as Arizona's Official State Planet in 2024 -- headed over Lowell Observatory's Giovale Open Deck Observatory to look through telescopes at Mars, Jupiter, the Moon and the Orion Nebula. The staff stayed after hours to keep the GODO in place so we could use the telescopes.

Giovale Open Deck Observatory

Afterward, as Levy, Eicher, Wilmeth and I were walking back to the parking lot, Kevin said he had a gift for me ...
... an asteroid!



29722 Chrisgraham (1999 AQ23)
According to the description:
"29722 Chrisgraham" was discovered Jan. 14, 1999, by LONEOS at Anderson Mesa. Christopher Fox Graham (b. 1979) is an American journalist and longtime managing editor of Sedona Red Rock News. He is a nationally-recognized slam poet who has written and performed multiple poems about Pluto and other space themes."


It's 4 to 5 kilometers in diameter, orbiting the sun in just over 1,552 days, or 4.249 years.

Current location of asteroid 29722 Chrisgraham (1999 AQ23)

It has an inclination of 14.70 degrees from the ecliptic:

Asteroid 29722 Chrisgraham (1999 AQ23) is off the ecliptic by 14.70 degrees



And an orbital eccentricity of 0.123 (0 being a perfect circle, 1 being a parabola; e.g., Earth has an eccentricity of 0.016709 while Halley's comet has an eccentricity of 0.96658):



Huge thanks to Larry Wasserman, Ph.D., the longtime Lowell Observatory astronomer who maintains the Asteroid Orbital Elements Database and sends nominations for asteroid names to the International Astronomical Union.

Special thanks to Kevin Schindler (obviously) and Justin Wilmeth, David Levy and David Eicher for being part of our impromptu celebration.


Osculating Orbital Elements

Epoch 2460800.5 (2025-May-05.0) TDB
Reference: JPL 57 (heliocentric IAU76/J2000 ecliptic)
ElementValueUncertainty (1-sigma)Units
e0.1238630535969226.4653E-10
a2.6233949653585576.7557E-10au
q2.2984532541584551.64E-9au
i14.708473045773343.2354E-8deg
node135.18052503768611.8459E-7deg
peri98.01621575046173.36E-7deg
M354.16301166927384.4962E-7deg
tp2460825.664034520440
2025-May-30.16403452
1.9454E-6TDB
period1552.007972959458
4.249166250402348
5.995E-7
1.6413e-9
d
y
n0.23195757127041768.96E-11deg/d
Q2.9483366765586597.5925E-10au

Huge thanks to Kevin and his team at Lowell Observatory who run an amazing event: Chief Marketing Officer Cody Half-Moon, Marketing Operations Coordinator Heather Craig, Communication Designer Alex Elbert, Brand Manager Sarah Gilbert and Content Writer Madison Mooney, as well as Lowell Observatory Operations Manager Amanda Bosh, Ph.D., who manages the observatory and the staff. She and Kevin are great at making the I ❤ Pluto Festival more than just an astronomy event by incorporating the community, bringing in local officials, glass-blower George Averbeck to create ornaments for the speakers, Mother Road Brewing Company founder Michael Marquess to brew a special beer every year and a poet to perform poems about Pluto and space.

Backstage in the green room at the Orpheum Theater with David Eicher, David Levy, Adam Nimoy, Kevin Schindler (standing) and Alan Stern, Ph.D., from left. Arizona State Rep. Justin Wilmeth [District 2] is reflected in the mirror.