Day 8.5: Star Tour

The night sky in the Atacama. They gave us these fun ponchos to wear to stay warm at night.

The Atacama is known as one of the best places in the world to see the stars. In fact, it is home to ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), currently the largest radio telescope in the world. The associated observatory uses the light information that comes to earth to study the nature and origin of our universe.

While we did not use such high-tech equipment, the night sky was --- in comparison to the faint stars I am used to seeing in Boston. I was excited to be able to identify some of the constellations/celestial objects I see in the Northern Hemisphere - Orion, Sirius, the Pleiades, Taurus, Mars. Although down here they are upside down! (or I guess we are).

With the telescope we were able to look at these objects more closely. Here are some cool things we were able to see...

>> The seven stars called the Pleiades and commonly known as the Seven Sisters, are actually part of a star cluster containing over 1000 stars. From their close proximity astronomers have determined that they were all born from the same nebula.

Pleiades: We didn't take a picture of it, so this is just a photo from the internet if anyone reading wants to try and find it. I think it looks like a very tiny big dipper.

>> The middle star of Orion's sword is actually a nebula (the photo below was actually taken that night with the telescope).

The Orion Nebula

> > Foggy patches of sky that we at first thought were clouds blocking our view of the night sky until we learned we were actually seeing far-away galaxies!

>> The Southern Cross (the southern hemisphere's Big-dipper equivalent that historically was used to identify the direction of the South pole).

The fact about stars that really strikes me is that for all we know the stars we see right now could be gone or completely different. They are so far away that the light reaching us now was emitted thousands or even millions of years ago.

In some ways, looking at the night sky evokes a strong feeling of "otherness." These foreign objects so inconceivably far away from us that our present is their past. It's a similar feeling to when you are standing on something very tall and peak over the edge and it hits you in the chest just how high up you are. Peaking upwards, we see how small we are in comparison.

In other ways though, the night sky seems to me very personal and deeply grounding. I’ve always enjoyed knowing constellations and being able to identify them in different places - similar to the way I like knowing the names of the flowers and birds in my garden at home - a way of being in touch with my surroundings, to know my place (some of this should also be attributed to my Dad and Grampa who taught me the local flora and fauna names in the first place). And that's what humans have historically used constellations for - to navigate, to locate themselves on this earth. We use them for directions, we gave them names and forms and stories. They seem very much ‘ours’ although they thousands, millions, billions of light years away.

Looking up, the mind flips back and forth between these two perceptions: one second - I am looking outward, filled with an overwhelming conception of vastness, the next second - I am looking up, at a beautiful bejeweled ceiling, hung about 50 miles up.