The thing that guy said about Andromeda stuck with me for years

I was at a star party up near Mount Rainier about 3 years ago, just some random Friday night. This older dude had his 12 inch Dobsonian set up next to my little 8 inch scope. He let me take a look at his view of Andromeda and I said something like "wow, that's amazing." He just looked at me and said "you know, every photon that hits your eye from that galaxy left before humans even existed." I didn't think much of it at first but now I can't look at any deep sky photo without remembering that. Has anyone else had a moment like that where something simple another observer said totally changed how you see the pictures?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jake20d ago

Man that "every photon left before humans existed" thing really got me too, I saw it somewhere online and now I can't look at any nebula shot without thinking about how old that light actually is. It's weird because on a clear night I'll just stare up and try to wrap my head around the time travel thing (you know, looking into the past literally) and it makes my brain hurt in a good way.

lindag3319d ago

Take it easy @the_jake, it's just space, not that deep.

kimmurphy19d ago

The guy who runs our local astronomy club once spent a whole hour trying to get me to understand how long it takes light from the Orion Nebula to reach us. He kept saying "those baby stars are basically baby pictures from 1300 years ago" and I was just nodding along. Later that night I was looking at the nebula through my own telescope and it hit me that those gas clouds probably looked exactly the same when my ancestors were building castles and fighting crusades. Now every time I see a photo of the Pillars of Creation I get distracted thinking about how the light in that picture left during the Renaissance and the pillars might not even exist anymore.