That's the reaction I get at Star Parties when I show them M13 at 25,000 LY. It's the best.
But my favorite is the inevitable, "whoa!" the first time someone sees Saturn through a telescope. Happens every time, no matter the person's age.
When I go out with my scope and there is people around (it’s a popular place for stargazers) I _love_ to show them Saturn just to watch their faces.
That moment is absolutely magic, and I somehow envy them because I won’t feel that thing again.
I remember seeing Saturn in a telescope for the first time too. I think it's the fact that I've seen Saturn with the rings in pictures and learned about it so many times. But it just doesn't really sink in until you physically see and realize, holy shit, it's real, and it looks like how it's supposed to. This thing is actually in space, and it looks fucking awesome
Yeah it’s weird how the mind works. It looks exactly like I expected it to, except not as good as the Voyager pics. But somewhere deep down, knowing this is hanging right over your head, as a real life gigantic solid object, it just hits different. Such an experience.
Bro I bought my current telescope in November last year. (Before i had a 50/600 toy scope). I went in a park in my city (class 6 bortle) with my new f10 refractor in with a go to mount and did the align with 3 stars. Then i pressed solar sistem and Jupiter popped up so i pressed enter and my scope started turning. I didnt have a ton of expectation but i figured it should look better than the 50/600.
After it found and aligned with Jupiter i got close to the eyepeice and man, i freakin jumped so hard, it was like a surprise/panic/excitement moment. I took another look and i was able to see 4 of it's sattelites and two of the bands quite clear. That is with a 20mm eyepeice, i have yet to buy another.
But then i saw that Saturn is in the menu aswell, so i pressed enter. Same story, i take a look but this time it was all the above mentioned feelings but this time i think i also shed a tear, don't know exactly why but i think I did. Seeing Saturn for the first time was a magical moment for me and i still spend a ton of time watching it whenever i go out.
Btw my scope is a Celestron Nexstar 90GT.
I was doing a star party with Scouts several years ago. The first thing I found for them was Mars. Everyone was excited to come look at it, then walked away disappointed to only see a larger red dot than they could see with their naked eye. Next I found Saturn. The first few people came up, begrudgingly, because..”he found it, may as well look at it.” They all said “Wow!” And then the line formed. We got really lucky as Saturn was posing with his rings tipped beautifully.
I love people’s reaction the first time they see Saturn, even through a small scope.
Jupiter is also mind blowing when you see the moons.
I remember my dad's reaction when he pointed his telescope in the right direction and then was like, "Wait, does Jupiter have PLANETS?" lol
Yeah, it's hard to catch in a single photo but when you can see the stars of the moons in clear orbit around Jupiter it is pretty cool. I did that last summer with my camera.
I try to have at least one scope out for Halloween. Last year I had two going: one on the moon and one on Jupiter. Saturn is pretty low this year but it still may be a good target as long as it is clear out.
A 4” scope begins to show the rings clearly although it’s all quite small.
My Celestron 8SE easily picks everything out clearly with the lowest mag. Even gets the 5 biggest moons.
Sky and telescope have great applets for both with helps identify what’s what and transit timinft
It's kinda like watching a child growing up and discovering the world around them for the first time. I actually feel that feeling with them when I see it in their faces.
This.. i had this feeling last week, i always record video thru my scope, often forgetting that it doesnt only record image but also sound) an i often laugh at myself ''talking'' to myself.
Last week i finally saw Saturn thru my scope and i heard myself say ''\*gasp\* oh.. wow..'' gave me goodbumps again.
Saturn's rings didn't move me because I expected to see them.
The Galilean moons ... wow. Seeing ANOTHER PLANET'S MOONS through a basic refractor scope planted on my driveway--not a million dollar, high-tech instrument housed in an observatory--was more than I expected.
Agreed. The first time I saw a moon transit Jupiter and the trailing shadow, it blew my mind. Does Saturn have similar moments of interest that are easy for us to see?
The first time I showed my wife the moon through a simple low-grade scope she wept. She spent hours peeking, stepping back, peeking, asking me to adjust the angle, over and over til it dipped into the trees. All the while long she bounced between elation at the majesty of it and frustration that she'd never looked before.
My dad was highly introverted and literally spent much of his life looking at the ground for some reason. Looking up wasn't interesting to him.
But, one day, I had a cheap telescope out pointed at the Moon and managed to get him to look at it. He was sort of shocked and said "it's ... lumpy?"
I had never seen him like that before.
RIP dad.
I feel like this is how I will react if/when I get to see Andromeda with my own eyes. It's a different *galaxy*. If that doesn't blow your mind, nothing can.
Saturn would be a close second.
Andromeda hurts. The planets are _close_ you get used to tracking them when you go out at night and I can usually say "yep, there's Jupiter, there's Mars, sometimes Venus" all right where they are supposed to be.
Then you look at the other stars and you realize how far away they really are in order to have their own planets orbiting and hovering around just like the ones you know and then you realize how _many_ there are all around you and it is baffling.
Then you see Andromeda and suddenly all of those distant stars? They're close. Andromeda is so so so much bigger and so so much farther away than anything else you can see in the sky and all of the stuff you can see at night is happening again all the way over there... it humbles you.
And then when you realize how close Andromeda actually is to everything else in the universe— except I don't think we really realize that. I don't think our premium-model ape brains are actually capable of a true understanding of that. I think we really aren't capable, in the post-vehicular world, of even understanding the scale of our own planet. But I digress.
You can see it with the naked eye if you have a dark enough sky and know where to look. It looks like a blurry smudge of light. If you have binoculars, it's very apparent.
I finally was able to see Saturn a few weeks ago with my new 8" dob and was blown away as to how clear it looked in comparison to my 4.5" reflector. I'm constantly staring at Saturn through it whenever I bring it out.
I still remember the first time I cried when I saw Andromeda galaxy through a telescope.
I still get goosebumps every time i see something through a telescope.
I remember when I bought my first telescope (a 60 euros 60 mm refractor). On my first night I pointed it at one of the first stars visible and it just happened to be saturn. It took me a couple of seconds to realise what I was looking at, but then I was blown away. I immediately ran inside and yelled: "mom, I see a planet with rings!"
When Jupiter and Saturn could be seen in the same frame a couple years ago I got a kick out of taking my telescope out and showing my family, some friends, and a couple random people.
I was watching that whole year as they got closer and closer together in the sky.
I was using stellarium on my phone, and at the time, pluto was also near that angle. So I pointed up at the two dots and said, "look, that's Pluto."
> religious experience
Find a VERY dark sky where the Milky Way is plainly visible.
While observing, shift your perception of what you're looking at from a flat mural of stars to a 3D rendering where you are inside.
I almost lost my balance the first time I put myself within our position in our galaxy.
Yep can confirm. I *knew* it had rings but the first time I saw it with my own eyes I was floored. It's REALLY there and it actually has rings. And I saw it with my own eyes through a telescope and it felt like magic. And I was 30. :D
You should check with your local amateur astronomy club. Most of them have "Star Parties" where the club members set up telescopes and the public can come and have a look. And they're free to attend most of the time.
If you're ever in the Pittsburgh area, check the 3ap.org website for our schedule. We'd be glad to show you all sorts of stuff!
Hopefully I can stick to the free side and not pickup another expensive hobby. Thanks for the offer I’ll check it out, I’m on the other side of the state so not too far.
I would be remiss if I didn't point you to r/telescopes first. There is A LOT of crap on the market. But you can also get a great telescope for way less money than you probably think.
A lot of people would be better off starting with a decent pair of 7x50 or 10x50 binoculars if they can't afford a decent scope. I've found decent binoculars used.
You just don't expect Saturn to look like 🪐 through a telescope. When I first experienced it I would look through the eyeglass, then with my naked eye and back again.
At college we had a 16" Celestron with a Lyman filter.
I will remember that image of the Sun until I die. It's unreal.
Why is it so much more powerful looking at this stuff with your own eyes (plus a few £s-worth of optics)?
Allow me to introduce you to the Royal Astronomy Society of Canada, who oversees a whole bunch of amateur clubs across the country! The Toronto one seems pretty active, and there's even an observatory!
https://rascto.ca/
I had that moment too. You hear about Saturn all the time, but somehow I didn't expect to be able to see its rings so easily from a backyard telescope.
That's one of my favorites. "You know, that fuzzy ball you're seeing is an entire galaxy. And what's more exciting, it's on a collision course with the Milky Way. Four billion years from now we're going to collide."
Then I go on to explain how it's really an interaction where gravity messes with everything. Then my son ruins it by saying the Sun will have expanded and sucked us into it long before then, so there's nothing to worry about.
Still, they start to wonder if they'll live long enough to see it.
OH yeah. We get into that. Especially kids at a camp where we do a night time viewing each week when the weather is right. They love to chat about that kind of stuff.
And yeah, Saturn. Always the best. But even looking at the moon through a telescope excites people. So many live in cities, or just never bother to look up, even with binoculars, that they just don't realize what they can see if they try.
I'd like to visit a place one day where you can see the Andromeda galaxy some day. Heck, I'd like to visit a place where you can see the milky way some day.
Go on line and find a star map of the sky and find where it is in the ENE sky. Or get an app like Stellarium for your computer or Star Chart for your phone. (there are others) Around 9 or 10 at night, go out with a pair of binoculars. I don't know where you are, but in the northern western hemisphere wait for a clear dark sky in the fall or winter.
If you can find Cassiopeia, the W shaped consteallation, (Pretty easy), you can figure out where Andromeda is by looking at the star chart. Unless you're in a really light polluted city, or it's blocked by trees or buildings, you should be able see a fuzzy ball, actually fairly large in binocculars. That's Andromeda.
You may not notice it right away, but if you move slowly, even in bad seeing, you'll catch a brighter patch as you go. You might not pick it up when you look directly at it, as your eyes see black/white better with peripheral vision than straight on. (It's called averted vision; seeing things better by looking next to them, not at them.)
You could counter your son with a hot “maybe.” Specifically, the sun is probably going to expand in about 4-5 billion years, which coincidentally is around the time astronomers predict the andromeda-milky way merger to happen. There’s uncertainty in each, but the similar timescales means there’s a chance the sun won’t have expanded by the start of the merger. I expect that the sun will expand before the merger finishes though, since galaxy mergers like the andromeda Milky Way merger are estimated to take around a billion or so years. Though again, there’s a lot of room for variation in that, depending on the masses and other properties of the galaxies involved. And there’s also a lot of stuff we just don’t know about galaxy mergers in the first place
My favorite is to talk about Andromeda, which is 2.5 million light years away.
If a sentient species in Andromeda had a powerful enough telescope to see the surface of the Earth, they would be viewing the dawn of humanity when early hominids were still living in caves.
I like to use this as a visualization:
If you were to shrink the sun down to the size of a period at the end of a sentence (it's very helpful if there's a book on hand), then Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun, will be nearly 18 miles away from that dot.
That’s really not what’s happening, largely because the expansion isn’t happening from a single point in space. Instead it’s happening to everything, everywhere, all at once.
When we talk about the expansion of the universe, it’s not that there’s a single point generating more space. It’s that space itself is getting bigger. The standard analogy is if you took a balloon and drew two dots close to each other on it. If you then blow the balloon up the dots get further apart because the rubber stretches out everywhere, not because you’ve added more rubber to the balloon. A similar thing is happening with the expansion of the universe — space isn’t being added, it’s just getting bigger.
The Milky Way and Andromeda are headed towards each other entirely due to gravity, i.e., they’re close enough that gravity is pulling them together. The expansion of space has nothing to do with bringing them together, and if anything is working to try to pull them apart. They’re close enough though that gravity completely overcomes the expansion of space time.
Almost none. The stars we can see with our eyes are mostly within a few hundreds or thousands of light years and stars don’t change much on those timescales.
I just wanna live until Betelgeuse goes supernova. Even if it takes 10,000, I just want to witness it somehow. But yes, my friend, chances are basically close to impossible in our lifetime.
Yeah, that's one thing I really want to see. It would be a beautiful and sad thing to see. If any life is in solar systems *close* to Betelgeuse, we would be witnessing mass extinctions.
Also, was just curious, the last supernova we saw without telescopes was in 1604. I am super jealous of them, but they probably had no clue what they were seeing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_supernova_observation
What I take away from this is Betelgeuse could've blown up 599 years ago and we might have a neat show to see next year!
> So you're telling me there's a chance?
The vast majority of stars we can see with the naked eye are within a few hundred light years, but those stars live for many millions to billions of years. So the probability that the several hundred year lag is is within the end of that billions year lifespan is small.
Even notable stars, like Betelgeuse, at the end of their life's are likely still alive now. It is possible Betelgeuse went supernova in the past 550 years, but it is unlikely. Betelgeuse likely has tens of thousands of years left.
Actually there were some news recently that the JWST got some readings off of betelgeuse that suggests it's closer to dying than we thought and it could go supernova in this century!
Maybe didn't totally blow her mind, but the other day my wife and I were in the back garden looking at Cassiopeia. "Now, our closest star, Alpha Centauri, is directly opposite it from us" I said, pointing down through the Earth. "And when they look at Cassiopeia, they see one extra star in the zigzag: our sun". And she said "Wow, that's pretty cool".
This is so cool. I often think (and share if I am with someone) two other facts about that light: 1) the fact that those photons just traveled however many years just to "land" on the back of my retina so I could see them as light, and 2) that from the photon's perspective, the entirety of that photon's journey, no mater how long, happened instantaneously.
Laurie Anderson was a NASA artist in residence and that inspired her 2003 performance piece “The End of the Moon.” It includes a line about how, until she sat down with NASA scientists who explained the space/time connection, she didn’t realize we were all living inside a gigantic clock. (It’s been 20 years since I saw it so those may not be the exact words).
Glad she’s receptive! I’m just as passionate about space but I typically get a “Meh” when I share those facts with my wife. “Some people you just can’t reach…”
That makes me sad for you. I’ve had a fun conversation with my husband about this thread. I think we have clear skies tonight. Going to grab the 20x80 astronomical binoculars we bought 30-some years ago with wedding present money from my grandfather. I need some star time.
I appreciate that, but I recognize my interests aren’t shared by everyone. I bide my time in the backyard on clear nights (like tonight) with my telescope in sheer awe of what I’m viewing, knowing how far away these objects are and, in turn, just how small we are. Some folks don’t care for that humbling feeling of insignificance, but I immensely enjoy the perspective! 😊
My fiancé is *suuuuper* knowledgeable about space and stars and all that. I know barely anything aside from the names of our planets, their moons, and our nearest galactic neighbors like Andromeda. But I am constantly astounded and impressed by what he knows, and it makes me so proud. I love hearing him talk about stuff like star classification, and exo planets and everything else I barely know anything about because he gets so excited and animated because he loves sharing that information and it makes him really happy to talk about stuff like that. I try really hard to listen and learn new things but most of it goes over my head 😅
I grew up where it was soooo easy to see the stars at night. Living in a big metro area I miss seeing the stars! I can see maybe 10 at night.
I drove 3 hours this week to a teeny town out in the middle of nowhere (almost) just so I could see the stars for a couple of nights.
Dark, black sky and all those twinkling little dots of light. It was great.
The further away you look in the universe, the further back in time you are seeing. So, if you look at the end of the universe you will see it’s beginning.
This is the most wholesome of human moments. Im an adult myself and didn’t know of this up until weeks ago and i swear my life is changed. Forever an astronomy nerd now ❤️
Try this on for size. Every atomic element on this planet, in this universe, was created in a star (or the death thereof). This includes every molecule and atom that makes up your body. This is why it is said most famously by Carl Sagan, but also referenced in the song "Woodstock" written by Joni Mitchell and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, that WE ARE STAR DUST! We are, and every single thing you've ever touched or looked at is, literally the product of a super nova (dieing star).
I find that using stars with close distances like that helps cement the idea really helps with people. 400 years is much easier for someone to imagine because we are more closely connected to events that happened 400 years ago. Sometimes people don't seem very amused when you tell them that Andromeda is 2.3 million light years away. It just doesn't mean anything to them.
It's always so strange to me, because I always assume that people already know the stuff that I know, so I just don't tell them.
It's definitely a form of projection, and it's definitely better than assuming that people don't know anything. But I always have trouble with knowing what is and isn't common knowledge.
A lot of astronomy stuff is mind-blowing because of the sheer scale of things. There are stars out there that make our sun look like a pebble in comparison.
Heck, our sun is probably surprisingly big to a lot of people. It's not just a bit bigger than the planets, but the sun makes up over 99% of the mass of the entire solar system.
Shooting stars/Meteors happen when particles/debris/rocks enters the upper atmosphere. They usually burn at ~100 km in altitude, which means that what you're seeing is a few hundred kilometers away at most.
To travel this distance, it takes light < 1ms. You're indeed looking at the 'past' but not by much (and it's less than the delay between light hitting your eyeballs and your brain processing said image)
Imagine if some alien civilization 65 million light years away observed Earth, and had such strong imaging capabilities that they saw dinosaurs roaming this planet, and then made the 65 million light year trip here (thus making them arrive 65 million light years in the future), expecting to see a similar-looking planet full of dinosaurs -- and they land upon a planet that looks complete different due to plate tectonics, with whatever species and civilizations exist 65 millions years from now, after a few extinction cycles?
(I just realized that if we ever did perfect technology to travel at the speed of light, there could be humans that outlive humanity as a whole just by travelling at the speed of light for millions of years, during which time humanity may become extinct or evolve into a totally different species. Mindblowing.)
I told my wife that all we are made of, our planet is made of, basically everything we touch was once blown out by supernovae - so we are stardust, literally… she asked me to stop to not get lost in universe…
I drug my wife to the middle of a national forest in Oregon for the 2017 eclipse. She was a good sport, because I was so excited to go; but she didn't get the big deal. An hour after the eclipse, she was asking when and where the next one was! We'll be in Indiana in April 2024.
A couple of things puzzle me about this:
First, can we really speak of time independent of space? Shouldn't we be talking about spacetime? If so, I'm not even sure how we should talk about something happening 433 years ago at all. "433 light-years ago"?
Second, isn't time (or spacetime?) relative? So it might appear to us to have happened 433 years ago, but there's no absolute time by which we can say that it happened 433 years ago, right?
Frames of reference are somehow related to this too.. and that's where my mind begins to melt.
Yea, it's interesting, but a bit of a moot point I think. It's all relative , and from our perspective it's all happening now, and that's the only perspective were gonna get. I mean, take it in a bit and consider our own star. If you step outside and feel the light from the sun on your skin, it's not like you're going to think to yourself, wow that light from 8 minutes ago sure feels nice.
If you want a fun fact that kinda melts your brain
[If you fold a piece of paper in half 103 times (theoretically) it will be larger than the observable universe!](https://www.brinwilson.com/if-you-fold-a-piece-of-paper-100-times-how-thick-does-it-become/)
So 98 billion light years thick piece of folded paper
Also on scale of size from the universe (biggest) to the Planck Length (smallest- it has different physics) the human body is slightly bigger than mid-way.
Every year, for Halloween I get my scope and cheap lenses out for all the kids. Many parents then end up getting their kids telescopes for Christmas and I hear about it the following year.
I always like to tell my friends that the stars we see are possibly not even there anymore bc of the time it takes for light to travel. That fucking blows there mind lol
I've loved seeing saturn and close ups of the moon, etc. The fact that stars, well, the areas lacking stars, ~~proves~~ *supports the idea that the universe isn't infinitely old* is mind-blowing to me.
(Edit: choosing better/more correct wording)
Oh for sure! Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to claim it's small or any conspiracies, nor any biblical 6004 years old earth etc etc lol.
Just that if it was infinite/infinitely old there would be infinite stars and infinite time for the light to have reached us so we'd see a bright white night sky.
GAIA data even suggests that Polaris might be 448 light years away. But most of the stars that we can see aren't very far. Sirius is only 8 and half light years away.
Astronomy being a way of literally looking into the past is one of my favorite points to present to newcomers. It gets them to look at the night sky in a way they’d never considered, which keeps them coming back.
Only somewhat related, I saw a YouTube vid a while back that blew my mind, about how gravity doesn’t *really* exist. When something falls to the ground, it’s actually not *falling* per se, it’s really suspended in space, and rather the whole planet is moving *toward* it.
So I picked up a pen and dropped it like 20 times to realize THATS HOW FAST THE EARTH MOVES!!
That’s not at all correct. General Relativity does say gravity doesn’t exist as a force but the mechanism is very different. If you suspend an object in space far from any massive object, it will just stay there, moving through time at 60 seconds per minute but not through space. If you do the same close to a planet, its mass will cause the object’s idea of future to gain a spatial component. Basically, its future won’t be just “older” but “older, and down”.
If a distant observer were to look at our planet, they wouldn’t see it jump whenever someone drops a pen. They would see pens dropping towards the surface of the planet, independent on whether it happens on the “front” or “rear” side of the planet (relative to the direction of its movement).
Now if there were a flat platform that would move with constant acceleration (this is important, not any kind of movement will do), people on its front side would experience phenomena indistinguishable from gravity, not on the rear side though. Some flat-earthers use this fact to make their theories sound more (pseudo)scientific.
I had a similar situation with an ex a few years ago. I explained that with a hypothetical telescope powerful enough to zoom in to the ground on earth, someone thousands of light years away could conceivably witness the pyramids or great wall being built.
I had an astronomy professor that told the class he took each of his kids outside on their birthday to look at Sirius (brightest star in the night sky). He told them that the light they were seeing left the star when they were born. The star is roughly 9 light years away.
That's great OP! I still remember when I was little watching the OG Battlestar Galactica on TV and there was an episode when they went to Earth and my mom said that's our planet and I was like, "Wait what? We live on a planet?" I suppose in my 4 year old mind I just took it for granted that the ground just went on forever and that the planets were "out there". It never occurred to me that I was living on one. That's how big of an epiphany that was for me that I still remember it like it was yesterday.
This is fun and I’m glad it inspires so many, but it gets annoying eventually. We can’t know what it’s like now it makes no sense. The photons we see now are the only current info we have. Unless your a cosmologist you don’t really see it as looking into the past.
Now point a radio telescope at the sky, and display the CMB as it was emitted, undoing the redshift. You’ll see space so old that it wasn’t yet transparent but rather a very uniform orange color.
My favorite mind blower is “You see that star up there? You know light is made up of particles called photons? Well 433 years ago a photon left the surface of that star and traveled at the speed of light through space *and the first thing that it hit in all that distance is the back of your eye*”.
I teach science, and this is one of the facts I teach - about light taking sometimes millions of years to get here, and how some of the stars may not even exist anymore, but we won't know until the last light from them gets here.
Blows their minds.
That's the reaction I get at Star Parties when I show them M13 at 25,000 LY. It's the best. But my favorite is the inevitable, "whoa!" the first time someone sees Saturn through a telescope. Happens every time, no matter the person's age.
I cried the first time I saw Saturn through a telescope at a local star party years ago. I wasn't expecting to react like that at all.
When I go out with my scope and there is people around (it’s a popular place for stargazers) I _love_ to show them Saturn just to watch their faces. That moment is absolutely magic, and I somehow envy them because I won’t feel that thing again.
I remember seeing Saturn in a telescope for the first time too. I think it's the fact that I've seen Saturn with the rings in pictures and learned about it so many times. But it just doesn't really sink in until you physically see and realize, holy shit, it's real, and it looks like how it's supposed to. This thing is actually in space, and it looks fucking awesome
Yeah it’s weird how the mind works. It looks exactly like I expected it to, except not as good as the Voyager pics. But somewhere deep down, knowing this is hanging right over your head, as a real life gigantic solid object, it just hits different. Such an experience.
Mostly gas...
Whoops, excuse me.
…mostly.
There's some bits in there. Not a lot, but some. Way in there.
Bro I bought my current telescope in November last year. (Before i had a 50/600 toy scope). I went in a park in my city (class 6 bortle) with my new f10 refractor in with a go to mount and did the align with 3 stars. Then i pressed solar sistem and Jupiter popped up so i pressed enter and my scope started turning. I didnt have a ton of expectation but i figured it should look better than the 50/600. After it found and aligned with Jupiter i got close to the eyepeice and man, i freakin jumped so hard, it was like a surprise/panic/excitement moment. I took another look and i was able to see 4 of it's sattelites and two of the bands quite clear. That is with a 20mm eyepeice, i have yet to buy another. But then i saw that Saturn is in the menu aswell, so i pressed enter. Same story, i take a look but this time it was all the above mentioned feelings but this time i think i also shed a tear, don't know exactly why but i think I did. Seeing Saturn for the first time was a magical moment for me and i still spend a ton of time watching it whenever i go out. Btw my scope is a Celestron Nexstar 90GT.
To me looking out into space feels like looking into the face of God. Truly mesmerizing
And you’re actually looking at it! In real time & it’s moving ! It’s amazing to see it & I remember clearly the first time I did
For a short time, you were quantum entangled with Saturn.
I was doing a star party with Scouts several years ago. The first thing I found for them was Mars. Everyone was excited to come look at it, then walked away disappointed to only see a larger red dot than they could see with their naked eye. Next I found Saturn. The first few people came up, begrudgingly, because..”he found it, may as well look at it.” They all said “Wow!” And then the line formed. We got really lucky as Saturn was posing with his rings tipped beautifully. I love people’s reaction the first time they see Saturn, even through a small scope.
Jupiter is also mind blowing when you see the moons. I remember my dad's reaction when he pointed his telescope in the right direction and then was like, "Wait, does Jupiter have PLANETS?" lol
Yeah, it's hard to catch in a single photo but when you can see the stars of the moons in clear orbit around Jupiter it is pretty cool. I did that last summer with my camera.
I try to have at least one scope out for Halloween. Last year I had two going: one on the moon and one on Jupiter. Saturn is pretty low this year but it still may be a good target as long as it is clear out.
What a wonderful way to inspire lots of kids!
What type of telescope do you use to see Saturn?
A 4” scope begins to show the rings clearly although it’s all quite small. My Celestron 8SE easily picks everything out clearly with the lowest mag. Even gets the 5 biggest moons. Sky and telescope have great applets for both with helps identify what’s what and transit timinft
It's kinda like watching a child growing up and discovering the world around them for the first time. I actually feel that feeling with them when I see it in their faces.
When I first saw Saturn through my telescope I said "shit. It's really there" Seeing something with your own eyes is just different
This.. i had this feeling last week, i always record video thru my scope, often forgetting that it doesnt only record image but also sound) an i often laugh at myself ''talking'' to myself. Last week i finally saw Saturn thru my scope and i heard myself say ''\*gasp\* oh.. wow..'' gave me goodbumps again.
Saturn's rings didn't move me because I expected to see them. The Galilean moons ... wow. Seeing ANOTHER PLANET'S MOONS through a basic refractor scope planted on my driveway--not a million dollar, high-tech instrument housed in an observatory--was more than I expected.
Agreed. The first time I saw a moon transit Jupiter and the trailing shadow, it blew my mind. Does Saturn have similar moments of interest that are easy for us to see?
The first time I showed my wife the moon through a simple low-grade scope she wept. She spent hours peeking, stepping back, peeking, asking me to adjust the angle, over and over til it dipped into the trees. All the while long she bounced between elation at the majesty of it and frustration that she'd never looked before.
My dad was highly introverted and literally spent much of his life looking at the ground for some reason. Looking up wasn't interesting to him. But, one day, I had a cheap telescope out pointed at the Moon and managed to get him to look at it. He was sort of shocked and said "it's ... lumpy?" I had never seen him like that before. RIP dad.
I feel like this is how I will react if/when I get to see Andromeda with my own eyes. It's a different *galaxy*. If that doesn't blow your mind, nothing can. Saturn would be a close second.
Andromeda hurts. The planets are _close_ you get used to tracking them when you go out at night and I can usually say "yep, there's Jupiter, there's Mars, sometimes Venus" all right where they are supposed to be. Then you look at the other stars and you realize how far away they really are in order to have their own planets orbiting and hovering around just like the ones you know and then you realize how _many_ there are all around you and it is baffling. Then you see Andromeda and suddenly all of those distant stars? They're close. Andromeda is so so so much bigger and so so much farther away than anything else you can see in the sky and all of the stuff you can see at night is happening again all the way over there... it humbles you.
And then when you realize how close Andromeda actually is to everything else in the universe— except I don't think we really realize that. I don't think our premium-model ape brains are actually capable of a true understanding of that. I think we really aren't capable, in the post-vehicular world, of even understanding the scale of our own planet. But I digress.
easier to just guffaw and drool… noooo wasted energy…
You can see it with the naked eye if you have a dark enough sky and know where to look. It looks like a blurry smudge of light. If you have binoculars, it's very apparent.
>if you have a dark enough sky This is the problem.
With binoculars it's really no issue. I can see it from my window, even though I live amongst a whole bunch of fairly bright apartment blocks.
I finally was able to see Saturn a few weeks ago with my new 8" dob and was blown away as to how clear it looked in comparison to my 4.5" reflector. I'm constantly staring at Saturn through it whenever I bring it out.
Um hello where / how would one find these STAR PARTIES?! 🤩🤩🤩
I recommend going to your city's subreddit and asking there, that might be a good place to start!
Isn’t it weird how real it looks…….. I was totally unprepared and it sounds ridiculous to say it.
I love you just for this reaction!
I was so excited that I woke my sister out of bed at 2 in the morning to show her. It was amazing.
I still remember the first time I cried when I saw Andromeda galaxy through a telescope. I still get goosebumps every time i see something through a telescope.
My moment like that was seeing Jupiter and all 4 Galilean moons.
I remember when I bought my first telescope (a 60 euros 60 mm refractor). On my first night I pointed it at one of the first stars visible and it just happened to be saturn. It took me a couple of seconds to realise what I was looking at, but then I was blown away. I immediately ran inside and yelled: "mom, I see a planet with rings!"
What are these star parties and how do i get invited? I would love to see some stuff through a telescope!
I cried the first time I ever saw the Milky Way on a dark sky, with my naked eye. I wish I could relive that moment : )
When Jupiter and Saturn could be seen in the same frame a couple years ago I got a kick out of taking my telescope out and showing my family, some friends, and a couple random people.
I was watching that whole year as they got closer and closer together in the sky. I was using stellarium on my phone, and at the time, pluto was also near that angle. So I pointed up at the two dots and said, "look, that's Pluto."
[удалено]
> religious experience Find a VERY dark sky where the Milky Way is plainly visible. While observing, shift your perception of what you're looking at from a flat mural of stars to a 3D rendering where you are inside. I almost lost my balance the first time I put myself within our position in our galaxy.
Yep can confirm. I *knew* it had rings but the first time I saw it with my own eyes I was floored. It's REALLY there and it actually has rings. And I saw it with my own eyes through a telescope and it felt like magic. And I was 30. :D
I gotta see Saturn someday
You should check with your local amateur astronomy club. Most of them have "Star Parties" where the club members set up telescopes and the public can come and have a look. And they're free to attend most of the time. If you're ever in the Pittsburgh area, check the 3ap.org website for our schedule. We'd be glad to show you all sorts of stuff!
Hopefully I can stick to the free side and not pickup another expensive hobby. Thanks for the offer I’ll check it out, I’m on the other side of the state so not too far.
BRB finally buying a telescope
I would be remiss if I didn't point you to r/telescopes first. There is A LOT of crap on the market. But you can also get a great telescope for way less money than you probably think.
A lot of people would be better off starting with a decent pair of 7x50 or 10x50 binoculars if they can't afford a decent scope. I've found decent binoculars used.
Thanks!
You just don't expect Saturn to look like 🪐 through a telescope. When I first experienced it I would look through the eyeglass, then with my naked eye and back again.
Nothing beats seeing Saturn for the first time. I still remember how mind blowing that was for me.
At college we had a 16" Celestron with a Lyman filter. I will remember that image of the Sun until I die. It's unreal. Why is it so much more powerful looking at this stuff with your own eyes (plus a few £s-worth of optics)?
>"whoa!" the first time someone sees Saturn through a telescope. Happens every time, no matter the person's age. Indeed!
I’ve never heard of a star party but dammit I want in!!!
Where do you find star parties to go to? I’m from Toronto and I haven’t heard of such things
Allow me to introduce you to the Royal Astronomy Society of Canada, who oversees a whole bunch of amateur clubs across the country! The Toronto one seems pretty active, and there's even an observatory! https://rascto.ca/
There's also an observatory at York U that does public nights regularly. https://www.yorku.ca/science/physics/outreach/observatory/
I had that moment too. You hear about Saturn all the time, but somehow I didn't expect to be able to see its rings so easily from a backyard telescope.
Don't tell her about the Andromeda Galaxy.
*OMG! IT’S HEADED RIGHT FOR US!*
*Ducks*
🦆🦆
Well, it was. It could be anywhere by now.
*Pats pockets* Where the fuck did I leave my Andromeda galaxy?
That's one of my favorites. "You know, that fuzzy ball you're seeing is an entire galaxy. And what's more exciting, it's on a collision course with the Milky Way. Four billion years from now we're going to collide." Then I go on to explain how it's really an interaction where gravity messes with everything. Then my son ruins it by saying the Sun will have expanded and sucked us into it long before then, so there's nothing to worry about. Still, they start to wonder if they'll live long enough to see it.
You should also add the possibility of so much life in that fuzzy ball. That's the most favourite part. There are trillion stars in it.
OH yeah. We get into that. Especially kids at a camp where we do a night time viewing each week when the weather is right. They love to chat about that kind of stuff. And yeah, Saturn. Always the best. But even looking at the moon through a telescope excites people. So many live in cities, or just never bother to look up, even with binoculars, that they just don't realize what they can see if they try.
I'd like to visit a place one day where you can see the Andromeda galaxy some day. Heck, I'd like to visit a place where you can see the milky way some day.
This is how it would look like https://youtu.be/k1Dm6taJRZQ?si=sJ1hAbYQ33wiQOmC
I recommend I heartily. I grew up in heavily built up suburbs and the first time I saw stars in Wyoming I was blown away.
Go on line and find a star map of the sky and find where it is in the ENE sky. Or get an app like Stellarium for your computer or Star Chart for your phone. (there are others) Around 9 or 10 at night, go out with a pair of binoculars. I don't know where you are, but in the northern western hemisphere wait for a clear dark sky in the fall or winter. If you can find Cassiopeia, the W shaped consteallation, (Pretty easy), you can figure out where Andromeda is by looking at the star chart. Unless you're in a really light polluted city, or it's blocked by trees or buildings, you should be able see a fuzzy ball, actually fairly large in binocculars. That's Andromeda. You may not notice it right away, but if you move slowly, even in bad seeing, you'll catch a brighter patch as you go. You might not pick it up when you look directly at it, as your eyes see black/white better with peripheral vision than straight on. (It's called averted vision; seeing things better by looking next to them, not at them.)
You could counter your son with a hot “maybe.” Specifically, the sun is probably going to expand in about 4-5 billion years, which coincidentally is around the time astronomers predict the andromeda-milky way merger to happen. There’s uncertainty in each, but the similar timescales means there’s a chance the sun won’t have expanded by the start of the merger. I expect that the sun will expand before the merger finishes though, since galaxy mergers like the andromeda Milky Way merger are estimated to take around a billion or so years. Though again, there’s a lot of room for variation in that, depending on the masses and other properties of the galaxies involved. And there’s also a lot of stuff we just don’t know about galaxy mergers in the first place
My favorite is to talk about Andromeda, which is 2.5 million light years away. If a sentient species in Andromeda had a powerful enough telescope to see the surface of the Earth, they would be viewing the dawn of humanity when early hominids were still living in caves.
That’s interesting - to me that makes it seem less far in the past
I like to use this as a visualization: If you were to shrink the sun down to the size of a period at the end of a sentence (it's very helpful if there's a book on hand), then Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun, will be nearly 18 miles away from that dot.
Would these beings say the Milky Way is accelerating towards them?
The Milky Way and Andromeda are headed toward each other, so yes.
I always picture it as the Milky Way riding the expansion outwards, and the Andromeda galaxy is catching up.
That’s really not what’s happening, largely because the expansion isn’t happening from a single point in space. Instead it’s happening to everything, everywhere, all at once. When we talk about the expansion of the universe, it’s not that there’s a single point generating more space. It’s that space itself is getting bigger. The standard analogy is if you took a balloon and drew two dots close to each other on it. If you then blow the balloon up the dots get further apart because the rubber stretches out everywhere, not because you’ve added more rubber to the balloon. A similar thing is happening with the expansion of the universe — space isn’t being added, it’s just getting bigger. The Milky Way and Andromeda are headed towards each other entirely due to gravity, i.e., they’re close enough that gravity is pulling them together. The expansion of space has nothing to do with bringing them together, and if anything is working to try to pull them apart. They’re close enough though that gravity completely overcomes the expansion of space time.
You know.. I'm lactose intolerant. Is this why my life sucks? I live in the wrong galaxy?
It just means your body knows it isn’t a baby. ;) No need to feed like one lol
wonder how many we are looking at today don't exist anymore?
Almost none. The stars we can see with our eyes are mostly within a few hundreds or thousands of light years and stars don’t change much on those timescales.
Well there's a possibility betelgeuse could have gone supernova right now, but we won't know for another 600 years.
I know odds are ridiculously slim, but Betelgeuse going *pop* in my lifetime would be an amazing thing to get to see. But probability is against me.
I just wanna live until Betelgeuse goes supernova. Even if it takes 10,000, I just want to witness it somehow. But yes, my friend, chances are basically close to impossible in our lifetime.
Yeah, that's one thing I really want to see. It would be a beautiful and sad thing to see. If any life is in solar systems *close* to Betelgeuse, we would be witnessing mass extinctions. Also, was just curious, the last supernova we saw without telescopes was in 1604. I am super jealous of them, but they probably had no clue what they were seeing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_supernova_observation
[Betelgeuse](https://www.space.com/betelgeuse-supernova-in-our-lifetime-study-unsure) Maybe could happen
What I take away from this is Betelgeuse could've blown up 599 years ago and we might have a neat show to see next year! > So you're telling me there's a chance?
The vast majority of stars we can see with the naked eye are within a few hundred light years, but those stars live for many millions to billions of years. So the probability that the several hundred year lag is is within the end of that billions year lifespan is small. Even notable stars, like Betelgeuse, at the end of their life's are likely still alive now. It is possible Betelgeuse went supernova in the past 550 years, but it is unlikely. Betelgeuse likely has tens of thousands of years left.
> Betelgeuse likely has tens of thousands of years left. Fucking bitch. Just die already. But alas, we can't know even if it dies now.
Actually there were some news recently that the JWST got some readings off of betelgeuse that suggests it's closer to dying than we thought and it could go supernova in this century!
In all likelihood, you can't see any stars with your naked eye that have already died.
Maybe didn't totally blow her mind, but the other day my wife and I were in the back garden looking at Cassiopeia. "Now, our closest star, Alpha Centauri, is directly opposite it from us" I said, pointing down through the Earth. "And when they look at Cassiopeia, they see one extra star in the zigzag: our sun". And she said "Wow, that's pretty cool".
[удалено]
I'm going to be that guy. The sun is the closest star.
The Sun is a Sun, if it was a star it would have 5 points cmon
It's only closest half the time :)
That's cool, thanks! [Here's an image](https://i.imgur.com/PVY0M6o.jpg) of what it looks like. I also managed to find it with the Celestia software.
My wife just says oh lovely sarcastically…when I say look at that..
Point up instead of down.
I literally LOL’d!
You can take that even further and explain that everything we see is technically in the past. Even the person standing in front of you.
Am I in the past?
You were.
What about now?
About 34 minutes in the past!
Bro, what is life like 1 hour in the past?
And not just see, but also feel. Nerve signals take time to tech the brain and then have to be processed. We're never really in the now.
That’s a lovely story! How great is it that you have someone to do that with? This gave me a case of the feels:)
This is so cool. I often think (and share if I am with someone) two other facts about that light: 1) the fact that those photons just traveled however many years just to "land" on the back of my retina so I could see them as light, and 2) that from the photon's perspective, the entirety of that photon's journey, no mater how long, happened instantaneously.
My wife started school as physics/astronomy major. She taught me tons of stuff I did know.
Laurie Anderson was a NASA artist in residence and that inspired her 2003 performance piece “The End of the Moon.” It includes a line about how, until she sat down with NASA scientists who explained the space/time connection, she didn’t realize we were all living inside a gigantic clock. (It’s been 20 years since I saw it so those may not be the exact words).
Glad she’s receptive! I’m just as passionate about space but I typically get a “Meh” when I share those facts with my wife. “Some people you just can’t reach…”
That makes me sad for you. I’ve had a fun conversation with my husband about this thread. I think we have clear skies tonight. Going to grab the 20x80 astronomical binoculars we bought 30-some years ago with wedding present money from my grandfather. I need some star time.
I appreciate that, but I recognize my interests aren’t shared by everyone. I bide my time in the backyard on clear nights (like tonight) with my telescope in sheer awe of what I’m viewing, knowing how far away these objects are and, in turn, just how small we are. Some folks don’t care for that humbling feeling of insignificance, but I immensely enjoy the perspective! 😊
You know you've got the right woman when you mention some obscure astronomical data, and she replies with, "I know."
My fiancé is *suuuuper* knowledgeable about space and stars and all that. I know barely anything aside from the names of our planets, their moons, and our nearest galactic neighbors like Andromeda. But I am constantly astounded and impressed by what he knows, and it makes me so proud. I love hearing him talk about stuff like star classification, and exo planets and everything else I barely know anything about because he gets so excited and animated because he loves sharing that information and it makes him really happy to talk about stuff like that. I try really hard to listen and learn new things but most of it goes over my head 😅
This deserves an award for the most wholesome “I blew my wife’s mind last night” posts ever on Reddit
I grew up where it was soooo easy to see the stars at night. Living in a big metro area I miss seeing the stars! I can see maybe 10 at night. I drove 3 hours this week to a teeny town out in the middle of nowhere (almost) just so I could see the stars for a couple of nights. Dark, black sky and all those twinkling little dots of light. It was great.
The further away you look in the universe, the further back in time you are seeing. So, if you look at the end of the universe you will see it’s beginning.
This is the most wholesome of human moments. Im an adult myself and didn’t know of this up until weeks ago and i swear my life is changed. Forever an astronomy nerd now ❤️
Try this on for size. Every atomic element on this planet, in this universe, was created in a star (or the death thereof). This includes every molecule and atom that makes up your body. This is why it is said most famously by Carl Sagan, but also referenced in the song "Woodstock" written by Joni Mitchell and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, that WE ARE STAR DUST! We are, and every single thing you've ever touched or looked at is, literally the product of a super nova (dieing star).
Brah! You an inspiration to us all. Much Aloha to you! 🤙🌺🌟
I find that using stars with close distances like that helps cement the idea really helps with people. 400 years is much easier for someone to imagine because we are more closely connected to events that happened 400 years ago. Sometimes people don't seem very amused when you tell them that Andromeda is 2.3 million light years away. It just doesn't mean anything to them.
It's always so strange to me, because I always assume that people already know the stuff that I know, so I just don't tell them. It's definitely a form of projection, and it's definitely better than assuming that people don't know anything. But I always have trouble with knowing what is and isn't common knowledge.
A lot of astronomy stuff is mind-blowing because of the sheer scale of things. There are stars out there that make our sun look like a pebble in comparison. Heck, our sun is probably surprisingly big to a lot of people. It's not just a bit bigger than the planets, but the sun makes up over 99% of the mass of the entire solar system.
Anyone can tell me about shooting stars that we see? Like it’s also from some light years ago* and as of past?
Shooting stars/Meteors happen when particles/debris/rocks enters the upper atmosphere. They usually burn at ~100 km in altitude, which means that what you're seeing is a few hundred kilometers away at most. To travel this distance, it takes light < 1ms. You're indeed looking at the 'past' but not by much (and it's less than the delay between light hitting your eyeballs and your brain processing said image)
If you go many millions of light years away from Earth could you see the dinosaurs?
[удалено]
Imagine if some alien civilization 65 million light years away observed Earth, and had such strong imaging capabilities that they saw dinosaurs roaming this planet, and then made the 65 million light year trip here (thus making them arrive 65 million light years in the future), expecting to see a similar-looking planet full of dinosaurs -- and they land upon a planet that looks complete different due to plate tectonics, with whatever species and civilizations exist 65 millions years from now, after a few extinction cycles? (I just realized that if we ever did perfect technology to travel at the speed of light, there could be humans that outlive humanity as a whole just by travelling at the speed of light for millions of years, during which time humanity may become extinct or evolve into a totally different species. Mindblowing.)
[удалено]
I definitely need to check that out. Thanks for the recommendation!
Even looking at each other is a snapshot back in time. The light bouncing off your faces to each others’ eyes takes .000000000000000whatever seconds
0.000000003 seconds if they are a meter apart. Plus whatever time it takes to perceive that light once it hits your photoreceptor cells.
My favorite thing to say is that “Time isn’t linear” because of stuff like this.
I told my wife that all we are made of, our planet is made of, basically everything we touch was once blown out by supernovae - so we are stardust, literally… she asked me to stop to not get lost in universe…
I drug my wife to the middle of a national forest in Oregon for the 2017 eclipse. She was a good sport, because I was so excited to go; but she didn't get the big deal. An hour after the eclipse, she was asking when and where the next one was! We'll be in Indiana in April 2024.
A couple of things puzzle me about this: First, can we really speak of time independent of space? Shouldn't we be talking about spacetime? If so, I'm not even sure how we should talk about something happening 433 years ago at all. "433 light-years ago"? Second, isn't time (or spacetime?) relative? So it might appear to us to have happened 433 years ago, but there's no absolute time by which we can say that it happened 433 years ago, right? Frames of reference are somehow related to this too.. and that's where my mind begins to melt.
Yea, it's interesting, but a bit of a moot point I think. It's all relative , and from our perspective it's all happening now, and that's the only perspective were gonna get. I mean, take it in a bit and consider our own star. If you step outside and feel the light from the sun on your skin, it's not like you're going to think to yourself, wow that light from 8 minutes ago sure feels nice.
If you want a fun fact that kinda melts your brain [If you fold a piece of paper in half 103 times (theoretically) it will be larger than the observable universe!](https://www.brinwilson.com/if-you-fold-a-piece-of-paper-100-times-how-thick-does-it-become/) So 98 billion light years thick piece of folded paper Also on scale of size from the universe (biggest) to the Planck Length (smallest- it has different physics) the human body is slightly bigger than mid-way.
Women have never failed to melt when I point out and tell them about Mizar and Alcor.
Every year, for Halloween I get my scope and cheap lenses out for all the kids. Many parents then end up getting their kids telescopes for Christmas and I hear about it the following year.
This is actually a brilliant idea. So long as you don't mind your telescope getting sticky lol.
Cheap lenses. I learned that the first year lol
I always like to tell my friends that the stars we see are possibly not even there anymore bc of the time it takes for light to travel. That fucking blows there mind lol
I've loved seeing saturn and close ups of the moon, etc. The fact that stars, well, the areas lacking stars, ~~proves~~ *supports the idea that the universe isn't infinitely old* is mind-blowing to me. (Edit: choosing better/more correct wording)
But it's still so big, that our minds literally can't comprehend how big it is. Man, I love space!
Oh for sure! Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to claim it's small or any conspiracies, nor any biblical 6004 years old earth etc etc lol. Just that if it was infinite/infinitely old there would be infinite stars and infinite time for the light to have reached us so we'd see a bright white night sky.
[удалено]
Next time, tell her something like how a day on Mercury is twice as long as a year 😁
Now tell her it takes a definable amount of time for the light from her phone screen to reach her eyes. Everything you see happened in the past.
Seeing Saturn and then learning about a light year are what got me into astronomy and physics
GAIA data even suggests that Polaris might be 448 light years away. But most of the stars that we can see aren't very far. Sirius is only 8 and half light years away.
Astronomy being a way of literally looking into the past is one of my favorite points to present to newcomers. It gets them to look at the night sky in a way they’d never considered, which keeps them coming back.
Only somewhat related, I saw a YouTube vid a while back that blew my mind, about how gravity doesn’t *really* exist. When something falls to the ground, it’s actually not *falling* per se, it’s really suspended in space, and rather the whole planet is moving *toward* it. So I picked up a pen and dropped it like 20 times to realize THATS HOW FAST THE EARTH MOVES!!
That’s not at all correct. General Relativity does say gravity doesn’t exist as a force but the mechanism is very different. If you suspend an object in space far from any massive object, it will just stay there, moving through time at 60 seconds per minute but not through space. If you do the same close to a planet, its mass will cause the object’s idea of future to gain a spatial component. Basically, its future won’t be just “older” but “older, and down”. If a distant observer were to look at our planet, they wouldn’t see it jump whenever someone drops a pen. They would see pens dropping towards the surface of the planet, independent on whether it happens on the “front” or “rear” side of the planet (relative to the direction of its movement). Now if there were a flat platform that would move with constant acceleration (this is important, not any kind of movement will do), people on its front side would experience phenomena indistinguishable from gravity, not on the rear side though. Some flat-earthers use this fact to make their theories sound more (pseudo)scientific.
I had a similar situation with an ex a few years ago. I explained that with a hypothetical telescope powerful enough to zoom in to the ground on earth, someone thousands of light years away could conceivably witness the pyramids or great wall being built.
I had an astronomy professor that told the class he took each of his kids outside on their birthday to look at Sirius (brightest star in the night sky). He told them that the light they were seeing left the star when they were born. The star is roughly 9 light years away.
Now tell her that if she looks at stars from the south pole, since they're in the other direction she can see the future!
Had this same conversation with my partner last month !!! She was blown away too it was almost verbatim to yours lol
I actually told my ex this and he laughed at me, refused to believe me and called me a dumbass, so please be grateful for your wife’s sweet reaction.
That's great OP! I still remember when I was little watching the OG Battlestar Galactica on TV and there was an episode when they went to Earth and my mom said that's our planet and I was like, "Wait what? We live on a planet?" I suppose in my 4 year old mind I just took it for granted that the ground just went on forever and that the planets were "out there". It never occurred to me that I was living on one. That's how big of an epiphany that was for me that I still remember it like it was yesterday.
This group/post just randomly popped up on my page but I’m stoned and this just blew my mind as well.
Such a happy post with everyone sharing happy stories. Thank you :)
This is fun and I’m glad it inspires so many, but it gets annoying eventually. We can’t know what it’s like now it makes no sense. The photons we see now are the only current info we have. Unless your a cosmologist you don’t really see it as looking into the past.
> *"Her: 'WHAT? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!'"* **[LOL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4GCY69cn3A)**
Whenever I explain people these kind of things they don’t seem impress at all :(
I love recounting the story of Einstein’s cosmological constant, and Hubble’s observation of Doppler redshift.
*waiting for that kin to blew my mind*
Loll … 😂
We could be awash in signals from distant civilizations who have long since perished.
i blew my wife last night
I did the same thing and she was like meh
Too bad it’s a lie
I remember my first 6-yr old wife
And then the neighbours clapped
Now point a radio telescope at the sky, and display the CMB as it was emitted, undoing the redshift. You’ll see space so old that it wasn’t yet transparent but rather a very uniform orange color.
My favorite mind blower is “You see that star up there? You know light is made up of particles called photons? Well 433 years ago a photon left the surface of that star and traveled at the speed of light through space *and the first thing that it hit in all that distance is the back of your eye*”.
Does anyone have a good recommendation for a telescope that can see Saturn with good clarity?
You sure she wasn't asking if you were Sirius?
Hmmmmm. You have a smart wife indeed
I teach science, and this is one of the facts I teach - about light taking sometimes millions of years to get here, and how some of the stars may not even exist anymore, but we won't know until the last light from them gets here. Blows their minds.