Category Archives: universe

Oct19

across the universe.

Posted on October 19, 2022 by beth

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my grandson stargazing in a night field

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i met my ex-husband many years ago

a man with a brilliant mind

who taught me myriad things

among them

oceanography, astronomy, photography

astrophotography

my grandson

never met his (now late) grandfather

yet all these years later

he put together one of his old telescopes

taking it upon himself

to learn astrophotography

he has become a stargazer

two generations later

his grandfather

would have been thrilled and so proud of him

proving once again that

everything in the universe is truly connected

most in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.

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“Science is the one human activity that is truly progressive.

The body of positive knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.”

― Edwin Powell Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae

Jul12

way out.

Posted on July 12, 2022 by beth

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The first publicly released image from the James Webb Space Telescope, showing countless galaxies and multiple arcs where the combined gravity of those galaxies magnifies light from background objects, bringing even more distant galaxies into view. NASA—

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson described the image to President Biden, saying all the stars and galaxies it encompassed were located in an area of space the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone standing on Earth.

“We’re looking back more than 13 billion years,” he said. “That light that you are seeing has been traveling for over 13 billion years, and by the way, we’re going back farther. This is just the first image. They’re going back about thirteen-and-a-half billion years. And since we know the universe is 13.8 billion years old, we’re going back almost to the beginning.”

NASA plans to release additional “first light” images Tuesday, photos designed to showcase Webb’s ability to chart the details of stellar evolution, from starbirth to death by supernova, to study how galaxies form, merge and evolve and to probe the chemical composition of atmospheres around planets orbiting other stars.

This initial Webb deep field released Monday promises to rewrite the astronomy books yet again, providing the data needed to fill in many of the major gaps in the history of the universe, perhaps even providing the framework to determine when — and how — the first massive stars formed, exploded and seeded the cosmos with the heavy elements that make life possible.

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“the size and age of the cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding.

lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.”

-carl sagan, cosmos

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source credit: nasa