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Archive for June, 2012

The excitement of live astronomy

by on Jun.06, 2012, under Blog

I had a few colleagues come up to peer at the sun through my filtered binocs during today’s transit of Venus. While we have amazing images coming in from huge telescopes and orbiting spacecraft, there’s nothing quite like seeing an astronomical event *live* with your own eyes.

I’m always super-excited when I remind myself that the photons annihilating themselves on my retinas at that very moment CAME DIRECTLY FROM the object I’m looking at—whether they started their journey 3 seconds (Moon), 8 minutes (Sun), an hour (Saturn), or millions or billions of years ago (galaxies).

Mind = blown, every time. 🙂

 

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