Patrick, I think your words convey both an emotional and intellectual connection that most if not all of us feel as we gaze upward. Anyone who knows you however brief, has to catch your enthusiasm. Thanks for reminding me of the wonders of looking up. Your words also made me think of this quote by Carl Sagan. "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." — Carl Sagan Jay Sent from my iPad On Apr 7, 2011, at 3:47 AM, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
It's times like this I wish I had Joe's and Chuck's wordsmithing abilities.
Every clear night when I don't have other projects going I do a supernova search. That involves having the software move the scope and imager about shooting a list of about 90 or so spiral galaxies I keep watch on.
There's just something almost magical to be sitting here and having a new image of a galaxy pop up on the monitor every 90 seconds or so. Some are pretty run of the mill but some are just downright beautiful. And to think that the chances are good that out of all of the people on the planet there's a good chance that I'm the only one looking at that particular galaxy at that particular moment.
And who knows how many civilizations I may be capturing in each shot? And how many of those have my counterpart being the only of it's species looking back at me.
I just wish I could put the feeling into words better.
patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php