Let me return once again to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photo, a document of simply mind-blowing significance.
Astronomy
A portion of the Ultra Deep Field • NASA/ESA (Public Domain)
Photo by Henrique Felix on Unsplash
In the Dreamtime
In early 1986, Sky & Telescope magazine offered me a free place on their Comet Halley tour to Ayers Rock in the Australian outback.
Photo by Samuel PASTEUR-FOSSE on Unsplash
Drawing heat from this contagious sun
Regular visitors here will know that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins frequently intrudes into my thoughts.
A portion of the Ultra Deep Field • NASA/ESA (Public Domain)
Billions and billions and billions…
14 billion is the age of the universe in years.
19th-century star atlas illustration of the constellation Draco
Chasing the dragon
If the Royal Observatory at Greenwich has a royal star, it has to be Gamma Draconis, also known as Eltanin, “the dragon’s head.” Eltanin is not an especially bright star, in a constellation, Draco, the Dragon, without any bright stars. But it does have a claim to local fame: It passes directly overhead London once each day.
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
Into the night
I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s.
"The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel" by Ditlev Blunck (1830)
Ezekiel’s vision
As I ease into retirement, I have taken to spending part of each year on a quiet little island in the Caribbean. I came here looking for winter warmth, of course, but also for dark skies. I am a stargazer by lifelong habit, and my primary home near a major American city is awash in artificial light.
The Orion nebula • NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Public Domain)
A peephole to the gods?
Under truly dark skies our ancestors saw the middle “star” of Orion’s sword as a tiny smudge of light. The Englishman William Derham, who wrote on cosmology in the early 18th century, believed the glow in Orion was a opening in the celestial sphere through which we observe the radiance of God.
Photo by Annie Niemaszyk on Unsplash
Winter stars
The drama of the night sky comes in two acts, as the Milky Way sweeps overhead in summer, then again in winter. These are the seasons when our evenings are posted with bright stars and constellations.
Jupiter, as imaged by the Juno spacecraft • NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
Heaven beyond
Galileo, OrbView‑2, Terra, Aqua, Lunar Orbiter, Magellan, Mariner 10, Yohkoh, SOHO, TRACE, Mars Pathfinder Lander, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Viking Orbiter, Viking Lander, NEAR, Cassini, Voyager 1 and 2.