Actually the words are just the first step. They convey a sense of wonder to others who we inspire to also look. But when dozens of people collect hundreds of data points their efforts look like just a boring bookkeeping chore until the data is analysed. Tycho Brahe saw a supernova in his day and he described it with words that he felt were inadequate. Today hundreds of supernovae are collected each year by pro and amateur astronomers. When we look at the data that comes from the unglamorous number crunching, the fabric of the universe emerges. Dark energy, the acceleration of expansion as well as the big bang. When Heber Curtis first saw the Jet in M87 we only had his words for it. Now we have photographed dozens of them and from the analysis comes super massive black holes and accretion disks. We looked at stars for millions of years. When we collected boring statistics and put them into the HR diagram we say the birth, evolution and death of stars. Words are just the starting point. Knowledge is the goal. DT