Big old event, Far, far away
August 12, 2009
Mostly it's always about bikes here, but now and then something else, like now. Astronomy is one of the many things I wish I knew more about, but I follow it a little, and I'm a big Carl Sagan fan, if that counts. I subscribe to Sky & Telescope magazine, but understand hardly anything in it. It has many advertisements for telescope stands that cost billions and billions of dollars, and telescopes with technical features that make me feel entirely out of the loop. But in the latest issue there was something I could barely understand, although it nearly drove me insane in the process. Most of you can get more out of it than most of me did.
You know how, when you see a star, you're seeing the light from something that may not even be there anymore, because the sun aside, those stars you're looking at are 4.2 light years away, at the closest. Light travels 186,000 miles per second, so even a million light years is quite some distance; and the closest star (cluster) is 4.2 light years away...at 186,000 miles per second. A light second is 186,000 miles. Even that's far, by my standards.
But on April 23, 2009, at a little after 3pm, some scientists who look like you and me saw...well, click on this link, then click on the images link at the bottom, and then enlarge the photo on the right. Take it all in!
http://www.nasa.gov/home/
