Scottish heroine

“With regard to the commemoration at Auschwitz this week, readers may be interested in my poem honouring Jane Haining, a true Scottish heroine,” emails John Nicoll of Broughty Ferry. “She could have fled when the Nazis invaded Hungary but chose to stay to look after the girls in her care at the Church of Scotland Mission in Budapest.”

Poem for Jane Haining

The stars fell out of the sky and, if you could have done, you would have gathered them up, one by one, and stationed them once again in their rightful quarters. And, as before, their shining would have shamed the darkness around them. But, instead, they made you sew them on to all those little coats and dresses, forcing you to chain all the bright and shimmering to the dull clod of a poisoned earth. Then, at the dying breath of that great evil, just when hope fragile as a Spring flowerbroke ground you were sucked into the maw and, in your presence, the darkness around you was shamed into nothingness. that it will blow up catastrophically as a supernova in the immediate future. But, just to make sure you see Orion as it has been for millennia, have a look at Betelgeuse when the sky is clear. If we are fortunate, or unfortunate, to see Betelgeuse become a supernova it will be a spectacular sight.

“Follow the three stars of Orion’s belt eastwards and you can’t fail to notice the brightest star in the sky, with the exception of our sun, Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star of the constellation Canis Major, the greater dog, which together with Canis Minor, the lesser dog, follow Orion through the sky.

“Sirius is said to twinkle and change colour and it does this because it is quite low in our sky and its light is subject to distortion in the Earth’s atmosphere.

“It is only 8.6 light years distant, one of the sun’s nearest neighbours, and its white colour emphasises its brightness. Sirius is slowly moving towards the sun and will be at its brightest in 60,000 years. It will still be our brightest star for the next 210,000 years.

“There is a gap in the sky following Gemini until the spring constellation of Leo rises a bit higher in March. Mercury will be best seen around February 10 when it will be low in the west-southwest for about an hour after sunset.

“Venus is so bright that it can’t be missed in the south-west shortly after sunset and setting itself at around 9pm. Mars rises at about 5am and will be seen low in the south-south-east until it fades in the brightening sky.

“Jupiter rises around 6am, following Mars, and will be seen briefly until it suffers the same fate as Mars. Saturn rises after Jupiter at about 7am but will not be visible because of the rising sun.

“The moon is at first quarter on the 2nd, full on the 9th, at last quarter on the 15th and new on February 23.”