Interesting picture.
Thanks for the link, Andy.

 

we pry wont be around in a million years or weve moved to a different planet

 

Occupying space as a fossil?

 

Me too. Ever since I got my first telescope and saw Saturn for the first time. I knew then that we are just a very small piece of "something" bigger.

I haven't had my telescope out in a long time. Maybe it's time to start taking it out again. I have one of these. It's an 8" Dobsonian.

 

That's a heavy duty looking telescope right there Scott. Space has always boggled my insignificant mind, I like to see pictures like this and think about how big space is and how small we are compared. I've always wanted to get a telescope and stare out into all of that vastness, but there's to much light pollution around here. I guess I'll have to wait untill I move to someplace other than this crappy town.

 

if i had a telescope...i'd be looking for heavenly bodies on earth...

 

I think Monty Python can lend a hand to this discussion...

"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth."

 

Anyone else notice that Andy has a tendency to start a thread, then just walk away without re-posting?.......

 

Shhhh.... I'm observing.

 

But then again, you'd only be doing that until the arrest for being a peeping Tom.

 

now thats what im talking about. i have an 8" meade digital,that also has autostar,i put the coordinants into the laptop,and watch the telescope motor into position


and yes when you ponder the distances,the amount of galaxies, and life itself, a whole lot becomes insagnificant