Perspective
I think it was Bitey who talked about what was in the sky lately so I went and had a look. I walk my dog late at night so I see three planets every evening: Mars in the East and Jupiter and Saturn in the South.
This picture is of Jupiter and Saturn. My phone’s camera lightens the sky considerably. What I saw was these planets in a black sky, not a blue one. I love seeing them every night.
Generally speaking, when we look up at the sky and see the stars, we don’t have a sense of which ones are close and which ones are far unless we’re very well-versed in astronomy, which I’m not. What generally fascinates me about astronomy is how crazy the distances are in relation to the size of the objects. When Jonah was in elementary school, I helped him with an astronomy project. We used his therapy ball, I think 27” in diameter, to represent the Sun. Earth was about the size of a marble, the moon a little smaller than a pea, and Earth was about 200’ from the sun. Light takes roughly 1/23 of a second to pass Earth, meaning travel the length of Earth’s diameter. At that speed, it takes light roughly 8 1/2 minutes to get from the Sun to us.
But back to Jupiter and Saturn. Saturn is quite a bit dimmer than Jupiter is, even though Saturn isn’t all that much smaller. It is, however, roughly twice as far from Earth as Jupiter is. That’s the main reason it’s dimmer. So I look at them and because I know that I can visualize the depth, that Saturn is dimmer by virtue of distance. I’ve never really been able to do that with celestial objects before.
I don’t own a telescope. Once, in college, at my college’s observatory during an open house, getting to which entailed clambering over a portion of the roof of a building built in the 1880’s, I looked into a telescope and saw Saturn. And saw the rings. It wasn’t just a picture, it was there, visible, what shows up in the picture above as the white dot on the left.
09/27/2020 @ 4:49 am
“…I looked into a telescope and saw Saturn. And saw the rings. It wasn’t just a picture, it was there, visible,…”
An enviable experience to be sure….
A fascinating post and an extraordinary photo.
09/27/2020 @ 8:10 am
This stuff fascinates me so much. I also like too stare at the night sky and the early morning sky when I take Miles out. These nights in Fall are excellent for star gazing because the temperature is still comfortable, and the humidity has dropped considerably from Summer.
I find it fascinating to escape our normal preoccupations with politics, etc, and focus on the imponderable hugeness of space. I saw on a documentary recently that astrophysicists have calculated that alternate universes in the multi-verse must exist…rather than may exist. So, that means that all possibilities exist. There’s a great mental escape for you.
Another of my recent discoveries was a discussion about how our galaxy, the Milkyway, and our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, are on a collision course. They will eventually destroy their present compositions and form one larger galaxy that is being called “Milk-omeda”. Fair enough. I have a better name though. My wife’s cousin who passed away this January was named Andrew. I told his brother that my preference for the name of the new galaxy is The Andy-Way. I think that is much better than Milk-omeda.
09/27/2020 @ 8:11 am
Pardon my typo. My to was too to.
09/27/2020 @ 1:38 pm
What’s an extra o between friends?
09/27/2020 @ 9:16 am
Where I live in Florida, it is very hard to see the sky. Clouds. Urban lights. You can dive out into the Everglades or take a boat out around 15 miles to see and if the clouds are willing, see the night sky. There was some hype a few weeks ago about Mars appearing to be as large as another full moon but it was really just its usual red dot in the sky.
09/27/2020 @ 10:36 am
Mars can never be remotely as large as the moon. It s really bright lately, though, and so unmistakably red. One glance and you don’t wonder what that is. I realize there are red stars but I’m not conscious of them and don’t know where to look.
09/27/2020 @ 11:09 am
Wildfire smoke obscured the sky for weeks here and it’s good to see the sky now. I’m more likely to look in the early morning, before the noise of the day evolves. The sound of crashing waves a few blocks away and a brilliant sky are enough to make me feel for a moment that all is well.
09/27/2020 @ 1:38 pm
Clouds, light, trees – I can see the sky but no detail, usually. Sometimes, when I’ve been out in the country, I’ve seen more, once I saw Northern Lights, but that means going out in the country which I’m not enthusiastic about. Maybe I’ll watch more closely on those occasional nights when I can see the moon.
09/27/2020 @ 1:45 pm
Trees are an issue here and clouds. Sometimes lights but less so than in a lot of other places. Some of the houses around here have rather bright lights but street lights are few and far between and I’m way up a hill in a residential area that isn’t close to a major city.