标签: stars

I was reading this month's issue of Discover magazine a few nights ago. At the back they had a piece titled "20 Things You Didn’t Know About Galaxies." The first point was that one of the first people to speculate that the Milky Way was not the only galaxy in the universe was the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant, who coined the term "Island Universe" to describe a galaxy.   Well, I for one thought that was pretty interesting. Previously, I'd thought no one had even considered the idea of galaxies until the 1920s when Edwin Hubble provided convincing evidence that the cloudy patches called nebulae in the night sky were located well beyond the Milky Way.     But that wasn't what grabbed my imagination. We've all heard size comparisons about different things, like "If protons and neutrons were the size of apples, then an electron would be the size of a..." Well, the author of the Discover article, Katherine Kornei, had something similar to this, but it was one I'd never heard before. This nugget of knowledge was as follows:   If the stars within galaxies were shrunk to the size of oranges, they would be separated by 4,800 kilometers (3,000 miles). If galaxies were shrunk to the size of apples, neighboring galaxies would only be a few meters apart.   I don’t know why, but this really made me think. I can't say exactly what it made me think, just that this little tidbit of trivia has lodged itself firmly in my noggin. How about you? Do you find this particular factoid to be of interest, or are you thinking "Everyone knows that" whilst trying to suppress a yawn?

IT was about 1967. I was 10 years old then, and a member of the Boy Scouts, as was my best friend Jeremy Goodman who lived just round the corner from my house. (The image below isn't of me or my friends – it's just a picture I found on Google – but the shorts and socks and berets give a taste of how dorky we all looked). Our scout meetings were held on Thursday evenings at the youth club on the corner of Dobcroft Road and Whirlowdale Road in Sheffield, England. After the meetings, Jeremy and I would walk to the fish-and-chip shop at the bottom of his road and each buy a bag of chips (French Fries). These were presented in a bag of greaseproof paper, which was then wrapped in several sheets of old newspaper to keep everything warm and toasty. In those days, people used to donate their old newspapers to the fish-and-chip shop (I remember my mom sending me down there with piles of papers), but this practice was eventually terminated because the government thought it was unsanitary. Be that as it may, my recollection is that the chips tasted better in those days (grin).   Jeremy and I looked even dorkier than these guys   Our favorite time of the year was the fall when there was a chill in the air. Jeremy and I would take our bags of chips, walk up the road to his house, and – using various finger- and toe-holds and well placed vines – climb onto the flat roof of his garage. Then we would lay on our backs munching on our fish and chips (sprinkled with salt and doused with malt vinegar, yum-yum) while we looked at the stars and talked about Life, the Universe, and Everything . Now I come to think about it, there were more stars in those days and they were much brighter than the ones we see today (grin). Actually, all joking aside, the stars really did appear to be brighter and there really did seem to be a lot more of them. In fact, you could see the band of the Milky Way arching across the sky. This was because pollution in general – and light pollution from street lights and suchlike, in particular – wasn't so much of a problem back then. About 10 years ago as I pen these words, I took 10 days off work and went on a road trip with a friend. We drove from Alabama to a "Dark Sky" area in the southern part of Texas (about an hour's drive from El Paso, as I recall) where there was zero light pollution. We spent a week sleeping in the days and observing the heavens at night. The stars were so bright and so numerous that if I had painted a picture of it the way I saw it you would have thought I was exaggerating (or consuming copious amounts of LSD).   The image above doesn't do things justice. The camera simply cannot reflect the subtly of the human eye. If you are looking at this sort of thing in real life, you will see that the stars are twinkling with all sorts of colors, plus you see lots of other stuff like shooting stars (meteorites). We also had two honking big telescopes with us that allowed us to observe all sorts of things in detail. The thing is that it really was staggeringly beautiful, and it made me realize just how bad things are (light pollution wise) in the cities these days. In fact, it makes me really sad to think that a lot of kids growing up in the cities today simply have no idea of the beauty they are missing in the night skies.

When I was about 10 years old (circa 1967), I was a member of the Boy Scouts, as was my best friend Jeremy Goodman who lived just round the corner from my house. (The image below isn't of me or my friends – it's just a picture I found on Google – but the shorts and socks and berets give a taste of how dorky we all looked). Our scout meetings were held on Thursday evenings at the youth club on the corner of Dobcroft Road and Whirlowdale Road in Sheffield, England. After the meetings, Jeremy and I would walk to the fish-and-chip shop at the bottom of his road and each buy a bag of chips (French Fries). These were presented in a bag of greaseproof paper, which was then wrapped in several sheets of old newspaper to keep everything warm and toasty. In those days, people used to donate their old newspapers to the fish-and-chip shop (I remember my mom sending me down there with piles of papers), but this practice was eventually terminated because the government thought it was unsanitary. Be that as it may, my recollection is that the chips tasted better in those days (grin).   Jeremy and I looked even dorkier than these guys   Our favorite time of the year was the fall when there was a chill in the air. Jeremy and I would take our bags of chips, walk up the road to his house, and – using various finger- and toe-holds and well placed vines – climb onto the flat roof of his garage. Then we would lay on our backs munching on our fish and chips (sprinkled with salt and doused with malt vinegar, yum-yum) while we looked at the stars and talked about Life, the Universe, and Everything . Now I come to think about it, there were more stars in those days and they were much brighter than the ones we see today (grin). Actually, all joking aside, the stars really did appear to be brighter and there really did seem to be a lot more of them. In fact, you could see the band of the Milky Way arching across the sky. This was because pollution in general – and light pollution from street lights and suchlike, in particular – wasn't so much of a problem back then. About 10 years ago as I pen these words, I took 10 days off work and went on a road trip with a friend. We drove from Alabama to a "Dark Sky" area in the southern part of Texas (about an hour's drive from El Paso, as I recall) where there was zero light pollution. We spent a week sleeping in the days and observing the heavens at night. The stars were so bright and so numerous that if I had painted a picture of it the way I saw it you would have thought I was exaggerating (or consuming copious amounts of LSD).   The image above doesn't do things justice. The camera simply cannot reflect the subtly of the human eye. If you are looking at this sort of thing in real life, you will see that the stars are twinkling with all sorts of colors, plus you see lots of other stuff like shooting stars (meteorites). We also had two honking big telescopes with us that allowed us to observe all sorts of things in detail. The thing is that it really was staggeringly beautiful, and it made me realize just how bad things are (light pollution wise) in the cities these days. In fact, it makes me really sad to think that a lot of kids growing up in the cities today simply have no idea of the beauty they are missing in the night skies.