Journey to the Edge of the Universe on Southern Cross TV: 27/12/'10

[RonPrice (RonPrice)]

INCREDIBLE JOURNEY

By the time I watched the spectacular, the epic, voyage across the cosmos Journey to the Edge of the Universe on Southern Cross TV it had been available on the internet for eight months. The International Year of Astronomy(IYA) had only been one year ago in 2009. The IYA was a year-long celebration of astronomy that was declared by the 62nd General Assembly of the United Nations. It was a global scheme laid out by the International Astronomical Union, and endorsed by UNESCO, the UN body responsible for educational, scientific, and cultural matters. The IYA took place in 2009 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first recorded astronomical observations with a telescope by Galileo and the publication of Johannes Kepler's Astronomia Nova in the 17th century.

By 2009 I had been collecting resources on astronomy in a file in my study for only four years. I had only come to any degree of systematic study of astronomy in the years after my retirement from FT, PT and casual-volunteer work at several stages in the years 1999 to 2005. I have had a fascination with the subject of astronomy since: (i) the start of the space age in the late 1950s and early 1960s and (ii) my becoming affiliated with the Bahá'í Faith back in the 1950s during my adolescence in Canada.

It is difficult not to be interested in this amazing subject being, as I have been, in the first generation to see the movement of man into space in the last five decades. But I have never followed-up that interest in any serious way other than: (a) to attend several of those planetariums that dot the landscape of the cities of the world, (b) to browse through a few books on the subject, (c) to talk with others as discoveries tumbled into my world and theirs, and (d) to listen and watch the occasional special on astronomy in the electronic media.

On 27 December 2010, just yesterday, that enthralling National Geographic documentary: Journey to the Edge of the Universe, as I say above, was televised. In this first decade of my retirement there has been an increasing range of educational stimuli that have turned me toward astronomy. The previous television blockbuster on astronomy was entitled Cosmos. It was produced in 1978 and 1979 on a budget of $8.3 million that included promotion. I saw Cosmos some time in the 1980s while living and teaching in the north of Australia. Cosmos's format was based on previous BBC documentaries such as Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, and David Attenborough's Life on Earth.

Journey to the Edge of the Universe was a one-hour televideo production using computer-generated imagery technology and building on images taken from the Hubble telescope.-Ron Price with thanks to several internet sites especially Wikipedia, 28 December 2010.

More stars in the universe than
all the grains of sand on all the
beaches! This doco was poetry
and soap-opera all rolled into 1!

Millions of light years in the blink
of an eye and our lives going by in
less than the blink-of-an-eye…that
message to a star-cluster sent in the
‘70s will take 25,000 years to arrive!

Yes, these stars directly affect our lives
in mysterious & not-so-mysterious ways.
The closest galaxy 100s of 1000s of those
light-years away. And nearly all of these(1)
pieces of information acquired in the years
of my lifetime: yes absolutely incredible!!!

(1) One light-year is equal to 10 trillion kms or 6 trillion miles.

Ron Price
28 December 2010

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