"KEPLER was my North, my South, my East and West? I thought Kepler would last forever: I was wrong." So lamented astronomer Geoff Marcy on discovering that the space telescope might have spotted its last exoplanet.
Marcy's impassioned pastiche of W. H. Auden's Funeral Blues was much remarked on after NASA's announcement of Kepler's abrupt demise. It is unusual, after all, for a piece of orbital machinery to be commemorated in verse ? even a telescope whose legacy promises huge advances in answering one of the most important questions of our time (see "Drake equation for alien life gets an upgrade").
But perhaps it should be. Poets have often taken inspiration from their contemplation of the universe, after all, and Kepler is just a particularly sophisticated form of such contemplation.
Scientists, too, have turned to poetry before ? not least the human Johannes Kepler. The Rudolphine Tables, a ground-breaking astronomical catalogue prepared by Kepler from data gathered by the deceased Tycho Brahe, begins with a fine illustration ? and a lengthy poem. So Marcy's poem actually respects a venerable tradition. Long may it continue.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Scribbling on the sky"
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