Posted on 02/25/2010 4:28:52 PM PST by XBob
"It's just so amazing to see the band of the Milky Way arcing from one end of the horizon straight above you to the other," he said in an interview with ABC News. "And if you're in a really dark place, the light of the Milky Way can actually cast a shadow."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Contemplating that view for any length of time will blow your mind. It is literally awe-inspring.
ping
You’re welcome. It took me 25-30 seconds I think to download. Too bad it’s not labeled, though, because there are a lot of interesting and familiar objects in that huge, high-resolution panorama of the galaxy.
Milky Way Galaxy:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/ESO_-_Milky_Way.jpg
Whenever life get you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough.
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you’ve had quite enu-hu-hu-huuuuff!
Just - re-member that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
and revolving at 900 miles an hour,
It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
the sun that is the source of all our power.
The Sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our Galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars,
it’s 100,000 light-years side-to-side,
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light-years thick,
but out by us it’s just 3000 light-years wide.
We’re 30,000 light-years from galactic central point,
we go round every 200 million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
in this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
in all of the directions it can whizz,
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,
twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
how amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
because there’s bugger all down here on Earth.
And, according to the Big Bang-inflation theory, it was all once contained within a volume billions of times smaller than a proton.
Sorry I neglected you, I got overwhelmed.
Sorry I neglected you, I got overwhelmed.
Only idiots and morons try to tell us there is no God.
20 - “”And if you’re in a really dark place, the light of the Milky Way can actually cast a shadow.”
True! I have walked through the forest by nothing but starlight. It’s fun and a little spooky. “
I feel sorry for the city dwellers, who never see even a single star, except in a sidewalk.
Future desktop...
Of course you would not have had tall trees creating deep shadows out in that desert. (I'm assuming it's pretty open desert in Jordan) Nor logs, rocks and branches to negotiate. ;-)
That actually sounds like a fascinating experience in the desert. You must have been able to see distant hills and other features in what must have been a rather eerie light.
Earth From Space at Night
July 30, 2009 | NASA
http://geology.com/articles/satellite-photo-earth-at-night.shtml
http://geology.com/articles/night-satellite/satellite-photo-united-states-at-night.jpg
many excellent assumptions. I still remember the experience, vividly, you didn’t need any headlights, it is clear desert, and over a small ridge of mountains, with not a light from horizon to horizon, and you could indeed see the mountains on the horizon (note - this was at about midnight, not sunset or sunrise)
He estimates that there are more than 25 million stars in the photo.
Big WOW!
If we didn’t have the view we have we likely wouldn’t be around to view it.
...
And only idiots and morons believe them
The truly amazing thing is that the stars we can see, and it often seems as what you’re seeing is all of them, are really only the biggest and brightest. Trying to find our little common garden-variety star in all the huge mass of the Milky Way Galaxy would be impossible
Better than that. On any night of a half-moon or full moon, I need sunglasses or a filter to look at it through my telescope.
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