Welcome

Sugar Star Candy is a playroom filled with snapshots of things I love. I blog about astronomy, programming, mathematics, music and illustration. Oh, I like maps and running too.

Stars and Dandelions

Diamonds in the tail of a scorpion

   |  2 minutes  |  328 words  |  Izzi

Today I observed a dandelion, stalked by the midday sun, its star-cluster head intact and deceptively simple, because astonishingly each of the seeds in the crowned head, can have a different genetic makeup. I playfully map imaginary constellations, tracing starry pin-pricks of seed points. A geocentric simplicity in a contained Ptolemaic cosmos – home to hundreds of individual flowers. A 1000 light years from the dandelion in my garden hangs an arrangement of about 80 or 100 stars in an open cluster. [Read More]

The Rings of Trees and Saturn

Memories are beautiful but imperfect

   |  2 minutes  |  279 words  |  Izzi

I wish I were a tree, so I would count my years as rings hidden from the outside by bark and moss. The only clue to how much I have accumulated would be in the thickness of my trunk and my long-limbed branches outstretched to the stars and moon above. As a tree, I would not have to name things or write them down to remember. Everything would be perfectly stored in growth rings, I would be one with what I have become and have the perfect memories to prove it. [Read More]
agate  saturn  

A Universe

S={X∣X is a set}

   |  1 minutes  |  33 words  |  Izzi

There’s a 🌌 universe in my room, and a

tiny broken world just outside my window hope

If not for the weaver

keep building

keep bending

Weaving through seasons

Through stars end reasons

poetry 

Never let it fade away

Always remember the young and brave

   |  3 minutes  |  432 words  |  Izzi

My brother was a teenager in the sixties. He kept scrapbooks – the 60s analogue version of Instagram and Facebook. The books were filled with profile pics and signatures of race car drivers, a collage of science and fiction, the stuff that inspired boys of his generation to become astronauts and race car drivers and conversely inspired tomboy sisters of my generation to dream and do and follow in their footsteps. [Read More]
apollo 

What happened in 1054?

People of value come and go, then what?

   |  3 minutes  |  539 words  |  Izzi

This is the Crab Nebula Messier Object 1, it is not the best image out there, but bear with me, it was my first mission to visit this M1 and I am happy to add it to my SLOOH gallery. While you look at the Crab Nebula, travel back in time with me, only a thousand years or so. We set our time traveling machine’s dial to 1054, and we are going to the Sung dynasty in China. [Read More]
messier  nebulae  crab neubla  m1 

Brighter than our sun

In darkness we sense light brighter than the sun

   |  1 minutes  |  86 words  |  Izzi

Brighter than our sun, Bright as the window beyond death, The light in the universe Cleans the eyes to stone. They prayed for lives without visions, Free from visions but not blind. They could only drone the prayer, They could not set it down. And windows persisted, And the eyes turned stone. They all had faces like statue Greeks, Marble and calm. And what happened to love In the gleaming universe? [Read More]
poetry  cohen  orion 

The Seven Sisters

TV Channels, heroes and villains

   |  2 minutes  |  322 words  |  Izzi

When the Pleiades fall, I wake looking for my goatskin bag to drink. When (the Pleiades) rise, I wake looking for cloth/clothes to wear. - A Tuareg Berber proverb When I was a little girl, my favourite stars were the three clear ones – the belt of Orion. They were the three sisters, up far in the sky. They reminded me of my own three sisters who were older, sometimes distant and not always interested in their tomboy-baby sister. [Read More]
m45  orion  pleiades  

Messier Marathon

Will you be famous for avoiding the comets or nebulae?

   |  1 minutes  |  203 words  |  Izzi

I started running about 10 years ago and have completed a couple of half-marathons, but sitting on my behind for a living and crafting software has not served me well to complete a full marathon, yet. There is a different marathon that I will soon be taking part in however, which is the Messier Marathon. I will be rewarded for sitting on my butt while I marvel at the wonders of a catalog compiled by comet hunter, Charles Messier and first published in 1774. [Read More]
running  messier 

All Eyes on North America

Of what can we be certain, but love

All Eyes on North America

   |  1 minutes  |  126 words  |  Izzi

It’s with awe and somehow a little sadness and a smile, that I share how, in 2020 science settled the controversy surrounding the distance to the North American Nebula. Amid uncertainty surrounding almost every aspect of our lives, with astonishing precision, the Gaia astrometry satellite shows the North America and Pelican nebulae lie 2,590 light years away. Meanwhile, we crawl through shadows and claw our way through hardship and anxiety. We crave for light and truth and togetherness, while drifting further apart. [Read More]
north american nebula  nebula  NGC7000 

Candyfloss and Oranges

Once in a lifetime

   |  1 minutes  |  208 words  |  Izzi

My first ever image captured on SLOOH was of Caldwell 41 (Mel 25). The Sun a ripe orange The Candyfloss Lagoon Caldwell 41 (Mel 25) It was completely unintentional. I was still trying to figure out how it all worked. I clicked a few buttons, then embarked on my first quest and purposefully took a photo of our magnificent Sun. [Read More]
Comet ZTF  messier  nebulae