Why Do We (astronomers) Look Up At The Stars Why Do Humans (you) Look At The Stars

[Dog Star (Phil)]

Originally Posted by avandonk

You are children of the stars. Any atom in your body that is not hydrogen or helium was manufactured in a star eons ago. Normal stars can only produce by nucleosynthesis up to Iron. Any element higher than this can only be produced in a super nova. Every atom in the gold you see was produced by a super nova.

Bert

Yes Bert, I can really relate to that. There is so much beauty in science!
That, and/or the fact that I'm a expatriate alien from stars far, far away and I really miss my true home.
We are children of the stars, both physically and metaphorically and we yearn for what we were, like salmon swimming upstream or birds migrating from one hemisphere to the other.
Or maybe we're just a bit "touched".
We yearn for beauty and awareness. Is this not as it should be?

[Gargoyle_Steve (Steve)]

I'm just in it for the chicks...




That, and the fact that there's all that "infinity" out there - you walk outside and can look up at stars that are hundreds, even thousands of light years away. These are distances that yes, we can put numbers to, but that does NOT make those distances any more imaginable or "real" to us in our own normal frame of reference. They're incomprehensible distances, we try to tame these numbers by relating them to how long it takes at the speed of light, but we don't travel at that speed and we can't really relate those distances to our own life experiences.

eg: How far away is the Orion Neb away in "highway speed" Ford years?

Something like 1500 light years, 10,000,000,000 km's in a light year, divided by 100 km/h ...

That means IF you could drive at 100 km/h constantly, never stopping for food or fuel or to replace your totally worn out car it would take in excess of 17 MILLION years to reach this relatively local object.

Andromeda Galaxy, still a naked eye object, now were talking millions of light years instead of 1500 ....

Like I said, LOTS of "Infinity" out there, and yet we can look up at those unimaginable distances and see the Universe in action..... stars are born and stars die, galaxies collide and merge, gigantic gas clouds move and form shapes of incredible beauty - the list goes on and on.


W O W . . . .

[TJD (Trevor)]

ive always liked science in 2006 it was the night of the lunar eclips i looked for my 30mm refracter but i couldnt find it so i dicided to get a good tele scope i studied and studied until i came to a verdict i could only by a telescope from the astralian geographics shop so i went to the shop with my dad planing to get a asteromaster 130 eq and my dad suprised me
(i ended up with a nexstar 6 se) celestrons 6" sct with goto 40,000 objects to veiw my dad new nothing about astronomy but he made the best choice and i dont like technolgey
now i 13 years old and i got a 6" sct and a 12" shywatcher dob what keeps me in astronomy
when i started i made a voul to find a comet or die trying when i find my comet i will call it (star of the heavens)first some observing

[Jen]

wow wern't you a lucky boy Trevor
can i have your dad to be my dad around Xmas time

[TJD (Trevor)]

my dads exsuse to mum was its an educational thing

[Paddy (Patrick)]

Originally Posted by avandonk

You are children of the stars. Any atom in your body that is not hydrogen or helium was manufactured in a star eons ago. Normal stars can only produce by nucleosynthesis up to Iron. Any element higher than this can only be produced in a super nova. Every atom in the gold you see was produced by a super nova.

Bert

This is "what was your face before your parents were born?", so for me part of it is the koan aspect of it and part the unutterable serenity of gazing at things of extraordinary beauty at fathomless distance under a dark sky accompanied by crickets. Same things really.

[TJD (Trevor)]

looks like some people here had a good excuce to start astronomy


sorry about the spellling

[Baddad (Marty)]

I often watch the National Geographic Foxtel channel. Birth of the Solar System, etc. Quoted on the program, "We are all made from 'Star Dust'.
Does this mean we will eventually become super nova or brown dwarfs?

According to the program we are the result of an exploded star. Perhaps there are aliens out there.
Many advances in radio communications was due to the findings of amateurs, radio hams. I believe Astronomy would be similar.

It is human nature to be curious. Man investigates his surroundings, his environment. With knowledge of his situation Man can then look to improve his quality of life.

I have a great curiosity about many things and this time it is Astronomy and looking for Black Holes and aliens. In years gone by I was not able to justify the expense of a good viewing system. I have now.

[casstony]

Originally Posted by Rodstar

Although many people I know quickly become fascinated when I speak about the universe, some people just glaze over. It seems to me that such people just haven't experienced that same sense of awe,.

It seems a lot easier to capture kids imagination than adults. My interest was sparked as a youngster by sci-fi shows and the loan of a 4" reflector. It's great to watch my own kids interest shift from looking at the great shopping trolley in the sky to wondering about the fact that it takes time for light to travel from one place to another. I wonder if introducing them to basic concepts at a young age will make physics any easier to grasp in high school?

On the other hand, given our chances of interacting with another solar system people may be right to be disinterested in astronomy; most of the sky may as well be a painted picture.

[TrevorW]

I have daughters can't blame any of my hobbies on them as none of them were or are interested in science/sci-fi.

I always looked to the stars as a form of escapism

[chrisp9au (Chris)]

I had no choice, my chosen career in the merchant navy forced me to look up at the stars!

Early sixties, no calculators, no satellites, the only way to navigate was with a sextant, chronometer, and a copy of Burton's Tables. Evening watch, beautiful sunsets, and then the brighter stars rising allowing us to take sights.

I still have my copy of Norton's Star Atlas from those days, Epoch 1950, and on Map 10 is a record of my first comet sighting. Half way across the Pacific heading for Panama, late 1965, and Comet Ikeya Seki stretching across the constellations of Corvus, Crater and Sextans.

Absolutely stunning, no light pollution out in the Pacific in those days! I was hooked, and today I can't look at Corvus without remembering that awakening!

Cheers
Chris

[PCH (Paul)]

Chris,

I too well remember my MN days and the glorious 'pitch black' nights that we enjoyed out at sea. I didn't give a second thought to the spectacular darkness that you (can) get miles out at sea, but I would dearly love to see an equally black sky these days.

Sigh

[chrisp9au (Chris)]

G'day Paul,

The last time I remember seeing skies like those that you get deep sea, was on a trip to Tibooburra years ago, but I didn't have scope with me that time. I retire in a years time, maybe I'll head up that way again!
Your 'sigh' tells me your into nostalgia, I trust you're aware of the Ships Nostalgia website?
http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/

Cheers
Chris

Originally Posted by PCH

Chris,

I too well remember my MN days and the glorious 'pitch black' nights that we enjoyed out at sea. I didn't give a second thought to the spectacular darkness that you (can) get miles out at sea, but I would dearly love to see an equally black sky these days.

Sigh

[TJD (Trevor)]

It's great to watch my own kids interest shift from looking at the great shopping trolley in the sky to wondering about the fact that it takes time for light to travel from one place to another. I wonder if introducing them to basic concepts at a young age will make physics any easier to grasp in high school?

well my father always tought me basic stuff when i was 3-13 and because of that i love science so i studie and read books and learn more and now im at high school there teaching me stuff that i learnt 5years ago school its so much easier when you like all the subjucts and your friends with every one

[DJ9]

I suppose the fact that when I look up at night, its hard not to wonder how insignificant this planet is compared to the rest of the universe and that most of us cant comprehend the sheer size of it. Looking at stars which can potentially be millions of times larger than this planet that is thousands or millions of light years away keeps me looking up at night.

Like jungle said, i like wondering at the big picture

[casstony]

Originally Posted by TJD

well my father always tought me basic stuff when i was 3-13 and because of that i love science so i studie and read books and learn more and now im at high school there teaching me stuff that i learnt 5years ago school its so much easier when you like all the subjucts and your friends with every one

Good to hear Trevor. Looking back at my own school years I feel the equations, etc didn't mean much to me because I was still trying to grasp the basic concepts.

Driving home from school recently my 9yo commented how big the Sun looked in the sky. I discussed with her how long it takes for light to arrive from the Sun or Moon, so the Sun really is gigantic. She had thought the Sun was the same distance as the Moon. It takes time for concepts to sink in.

[bluescope]

My first WOW moment was whilst on a camping trip in the South West of Western Australia with my son at a place called Meelup Beach. We were in my parents campervan and a very rough storm raged for some time then suddenly stopped and we stepped outside ... looked up and were stunned by a sky full of sparkling stars ... I had never seen such a display.

A couple of years later I had a photography gallery in Fremantle and had many hours to sit and read ... a friend loaned me a couple of astro magazines to pass the time and I was blown away by the images of the cosmos. Another shop keeper told me he had a 114mm Tasco Newtonian telescope that he never used and I was welcome to borrow. That started the fascination and once I saw the rings of Saturn through this shaky scope I was hooked.

Within a month I had bought a 200mm Skywatcher Newtonian on an EQ5 mount and was constantly out in my backyard trying to find new objects ... Omega Centauri was one of my favourites with it's tight ball of glistening gems and ofcourse the moon always got a viewing.

I then bought a Meade DSX 90AT Maksutov-Cassegrain with gotto from a guy in the US off ebay. It took three months to arrive but was well worth the wait. I learned a lot from the #497 controller, it has a wealth of information stored in it. I still think it's better than crappy SynScan and wish that SkyWatcher would get their act together to come up with software similar to Meade's ( sorry it's one of my peeves ).

A year or so later I bought a SkyWatcher 254mm Newtonian and an EQ6 Pro mount which enabled me to take images with my Canon 350D DSLR of objects other than the moon and bright star clusters ... Deep Sky objects were beckoning and I needed auto guiding to go to the next level. Oh ... I also bought a SkyWatcher 180mm Mak Pro just because it looked so spunky and I was flush with dollars.

Today I am living in a dark sky location with my own split roof observatory and an SBIG ST2000XCM astro ccd camera mounted on my William Optics FLT110 F7 Triplet Apochromatic Refractor. I still have all my other scopes and will use them again one day ... honest.

To think that all this started with a storm at Meelup Beach and then some borrowed magazines etc .... once you're hooked you're hooked

I think I have waffled enough .... clear skies everyone !

[Jen]

Awwww nice story there bluescope
And its good to see you have definately moved on up in the world with the size of your scopes

[bluescope]

Originally Posted by Jen

Awwww nice story there bluescope
And its good to see you have definately moved on up in the world with the size of your scopes

Up then down again Jen but I love my 4.3" apo ... actually I love them all in their own way

[Jen]

Yep i would keep them all