Idyllic

 Knock, knock.

 

 Who's there?

 

 

Hike.

 

 Hike who?

 

 

The Great Blue Heron,

 

 

Stalks silently in water,

 

 

Just until it strikes -

 

 

 

 

WOB 

 

Haiku to you too 

Prairie Chicken

 This is a test.

 took several videos

 too big - so a still:

 

 

Part 3: First Haiku

 I do not recall now when I wrote my first Haiku

 - it was probably in 2018 after I had read  "Lunar and Planetary Science Inspires Out-of-This-World Poetry"  in March 2018 and "Can You Express Your Science in 17 Syllables?"  in October 2018 - click on the blue-coloured phrases to read what probably inspired me.

I repeat my haiku here:

Rosetta Mission         5 

Chury-Gerasimenko   7

3 Philae Landings       5 

 

Now why I was involved with Rosetta goes back to 1992 and "Tag der öffener Tür" in Effelsberg, I thought my German was good enough to try to help the public better understand what we at the Max.Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie were doing.

 

I enjoyed my encounter with the public. Then in March 1993 the "String of Perls" was discovered on plates taken by Canadian David Levy.

     It became clear that this was a comet pulled apart by the gravitational field of Jupiter - tides ripped the comet to pieces which would collide with Jupiter in the summer of 1994:

 

 

So for TdoT in the Institute in August 1994 I tried making comets to show how easy it was to pull a comet apart. This caught a lot of attention. I was invited to the launch of Rosetta in Darmstadt in February 2004. High winds lead to a reschedule of the launch to Tuesday March 2, 2004. I made comets during the 100 minutes between launch and Rosetta making it into orbit.

 It was a lot of fun:

 

 

 I'll spare you the photos that followed, the invitation to return in 2011 as Rosetta went into hibernation, the invitation to return for the landing of Philae on 67P on November 12 2014.

 

In 2024 I wrote another haiku to recall the achievement of hibernation. Originally I had written it for that year and the first line was .

"Ten years ago"

 

Then I changed it to "11 years ago" for this year and realized I had missed the point of the spirit of Haiku. Now that haiku reads:

Awaken Space Probe

Hibernation ended here

In 20 14

(dated Aug 4, 2025) 

 

 

There is much more that might have been written but won't be. However, I would like to dedicate these thoughts to a friend, Klaus, who studied 17 syllable Haiku. I knew him better between 1973 and 1976 and never asked him what he was doing. I did not like poetry, such was my ignorance. And I had forgotten my visit to the Arbeitsamt in Bochum to see whether I required a work permit in Oktober 1971. When I said I did astronomy, the civil servant replied, "Nein!  DU brauchst kein Arbeitserlaubnis, Du tuest kein nutzvollen Arbeit". 

I have no reason to be smug about my scientific curiosity. I have learned a little since then. Klaus, I hope you can forgive me. 

 

WOB 

My First Haiku

Part One

 

Rosetta Mission

Chury-Gerasimenko   

Three Philae Landings

 

Part Two

 Rosetta Mission

 

Chury-Gerasimenko

 (With ESA Director General in between)

 Klim Ivanovich Churyumov Ukrainian, Jean-Jacque Dordain, and Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko  Tajikistani astronomer

 Three Philae Landings

 

 Or ...

 

 

 

 

 Now aren't you glad for Haikus!

 

WOB 

 

PS There is still a Part Three to come!