Astronomy Picture of the Day: 1/18/2013 (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html)
Most mornings I awake to the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). It is a constructive way to greet the world. My morning ritual, before I jump in the shower, is to put the kettle on the stove so I am ready to make tea as soon as I dress. Breakfast consist of tea and two pieces of toast with peanut butter and jam. Once seated, I raise the lid of my elegant little computer and instantly the screen brightens.
What initially occupies its desktop is NOAA’S 7-Day Forecast for Latitude 41.84°N and Longitude 87.68°W. Depending on the weather and my plans for the day I may or may not explore deeper into NOAA’s maze of web pages. There is radar, both regional and national. There are the GOES satellite images from 25,000 miles out in space—I favor the infrared. Next, it is the National Forecast Charts and if I will be on the water, there are a plethora of marine sites to explore.
Once satisfied that I have a understanding of the weather I move to APOD. Well, not so fast. I admit to the occasional glance at WOOT while I sip my tea, and of course by now the email program has beeped to inform me of a few contacts since last night. Now, through with these distractions I click on my APOD bookmark (PIC) to see what wonder will present itself this morning.
I am not sure when I first stumbled upon APOD but I have frequented it for years. It rarely fails to start my day with a WOW! I use it as the foundation for the day to come. This said, I suppose you are wondering why I titled this commentary “insignificant”. In my way of thinking we are not that significant. What would it matter to another inhabited planet light years away if we ceased to exist?
Humans have gone from the pre-15th century earth centric view to Copernicus’s heretical heliocentric and now to Hubble’s Extreme Deep Field. It shows thousands of galaxies dating back 13 billion years. We can almost see the beginning of time. These distant images are garnered from a tiny sliver of dark sky in the constellation of Ursa Major. There are spiral, elliptical and irregular galaxies. As you pan the image galaxies crash into one another. It is so spectacular that the universe seems without a center, without definition. Looking at it I mystify at Earth’s place in the firmament.
But there are more local concerns. There are the “little” rocky bits whizzing past us at tens of thousands of mph. While we had our eyes 17,000 miles away on asteroid DA14 another rock crashed into Russia. NASA is searching for them. There are to date 9714 NEA’s (Near Earth Asteroids). Of which 861 are considered PHA’s (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids). And I do not think that there has been much effort to search the southern hemisphere’s sky for possible intruders.
Prating on about this makes me think of the oft-quoted tea phrase: ichigo, ichie (one time, one meeting). One meeting with any of these objects could ruin our comfortable lives. It is remarkable what thoughts can come from looking through a telescope, no matter the wavelength. An archaic Japanese aphorism is brought to life by the most advanced technology.
Having said this—understanding our insignificance in the time and distance scale of the universe—I come back to the importance of what has been given us: the opportunity for self-consciousness.
So I do not despair. Each day I search for something significant even if in the long, long run it turns out to be insignificant!
March 2013
