For the Love of Space...

Image Courtesy of NASA

Do you enjoy watching the night sky? Have you ever been known to gander towards the heavens, watching the stars slowly pass above you? Do you occasionally study the moon, it's phases, and where it is in the sky? Do you occasionally set aside some time to and plan ahead for meeting up with friends to watch the next major meteor shower? And have you ever set your eyes in one part of the sky, just to see if one of the 'stars' is quickly moving directly overhead? If you have said "Yes!", to any of those questions, then I would like to say hello to you, as an astronomer friend. I have always had an obsession with the night sky.

My Dad first explained to me when I was 8 years old, that the star I was seeing moving quickly overhead, wasn't really a star at all; but a man made satellite! "Wow!", I remember saying to myself. It just wasn't comprehendable to me. I relate my feelings then as to what my Grandfathers Mom must have thought many years back. My Grandfather Robert told me that when he was just a kid, he was outside the back porch one summer night watching the stars. His mom was inside doing the dinner dishes, when Robert started yelling excitedly for his mom to come outside. In a panic, she raced out the back porch and asked Robert what all the commotion was about? "Mom, look there...", he yelled pointing in the direction of a moving star. "That's a satellite! We put that into space, and it's over 200 miles above us, moving at over 15,000 miles per hour!!! We can see it because the satellite is reflecting the sun's rays!" His mom studied the moving star for a moment, and then looked at Robert, paused, and then took the dish rag and hit it over his head exclaiming, "Robert... you need to quit dreaming up these wild things, get back inside and do your homework!". Little did my Grandfather's mom know, but he had just studied about satellites in school a few weeks before!

Just as the our Ocean has so much left unknown, so does our outer space; if not more! When viewing pictures that the Hubble has recently taken, I forget that just a square centimeter of that picture of a Magellanic Cloud is really light years across! I forget that when I'm looking up at the stars at night, that I'm really seeing the stars as they were hundreds and thousands if not millions of years ago! Our view of the night sky is truly the only time-machine that we have here on earth! There is so much out there that we can't and don't know. It's an awesome balance of nature and our planet Earth is only a minuscule spec of space dust caught up in the balance of the gargantuan heavenly orbit.

For those that have even the slightest interest in Space and all that it has to offer, I suggest visiting Spaceweather.com. Dr. Tony Phillips pins the site daily, and always has something new and interesting to share.