Points of light
In another of those “Ha! Made you look!” moments, I followed a link on the CBC website, purporting to show what it looks like when asteroids collide. In return for my effort, the artist’s conception drawing was presented in full colour. All that it lacked were those Batman type sound effect balloons. And there lies my frustration. What NASA actually has on hand is a series of graphs, collected over a period of months, that show an increased amount of light detected by an infrared sensor. The artist can feel free to illustrate me, disappointed.
Far too much of astrophysics that trickles down to you and me is stylized interpretation. Here’s the reality: a star, seen by the naked eye, is a point of light. The same star, seen through an affordable telescope, is a point of light. The same star, seen through one of those magical domed observatories on the top of a mythical mountain, is still a point of light. There. Sorry to kill the dream.
The moon, however, does look bigger and closer through just about anything more optically appropriate than a squint. Back to regular programming, now.
We turned on the upstairs TV this morning, for the first time in a really long time. Given that we do not have a “box” from the cable people for that set, I was surprised to see anything other than a menu screen. (Forget snow; that hasn’t come in to a TV near here in a really long time, either). The set was actually purchased, during a moment of whimsy, to show VHS rentals. My children still remember what those were, barely. Yours; not so much.
Just because I could, the car seat has been sprayed with Febreze. Rather cloying odour, in my opinion. I’ll see if things pass the sniff test in the morning.
