The Tonsilrainbowlitis Virus and The Spirograph Nebula

This work has been selected for exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall in May 2008. Listen to the Tonsil created by students from Park View Community School, Durham Community Business College and Sion-Manning RC Girls School with composer Duncan Chapman.

My picture started as a mystic rose pattern. It is what I think a virus might look like for a disease called Tonsilrainbowlitis. I have had tonsillitis so I have written an acrostic poem about it.

Throat is red and hurting.
Oh, the painful small gland!
Need to get some medicine.
Swelling has started to disappear,
Infection almost gone.
Lucky me! I feel much better now.

Keywords: virus, tonsil, gland. Size: 0.0017 mm wide and 0.01 mm long.

Photo credit: Raghvendra Sahai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
USA
www.jpl.nasa.gov

Did you ever wonder how many other suns there are in the Universe? In about five billion years our Sun might look a bit like this unusual cloud of gas and dust called the Spirograph nebula (IC 418). A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust in outer space where stars are born or have died. At the centre of this one is a star that has run out of nuclear fuel creating what scientists call a white dwarf. The nebula is 2000 light years away.

Scale: The nebula is around two trillion kilometres wide