About fifteen thousand years ago, humans wandered into North America.
Maybe it’ll be warmer over there. Follow the mammoths, Urrg!
At the same time, ninety thousand trillion miles away in the constellation Canis Major, the great dog, a batch of photons yelped. Spiked by radiation from a massive Wolf-Rayet star, they decided to leave “town” (a giant cloud of hydrogen and oxygen thirty light years across.)
Maybe it’ll be cooler over there.
The photons sped through interstellar space.
Are we there yet?
No.
The travelers figured out farming here in the States, ran out of mammoths, fought a few wars, made some new friends, started a new holiday, had some “disagreements”, built buildings, made clocks and cars and the vacuum tube…The photons still hurtled through the blackness.
Are we there yet?
No….
Some of my ancestors floated over on a boat. The photons missed Babe Ruth, Marilyn Monroe, and all of the events outlined in Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”
Are we there yet?
For the love of Odin, NO!
Last Wednesday evening, I referenced my charts, popped in a special “nebula filter”, and swung the telescope along the glittering winter milky way towards NGC 2359, known as “Thor’s Helmet.”
Fifteen thousand years after Urrg impressed all the primitive ladies with his daring leadership and the pig was first domesticated, the photons arrived at the eyepiece of my telescope.
Here’s what it looked like.
At the Eyepiece
The field was filled with a hundred or so faint stars, glittering across a black background. A few dozen brighter stars punctuated the glimmer, louder voices in a crowded room.
They all had a slightly greenish tint, thanks to that nebula filter. It’s designed to pass the specific light of ionized oxygen emitted from nebulae, and cut any earthly street light interference.
A ghostly bubble of light hovered on the starry canvas, with two long “horns” sticking off to the sides, a Viking helmet in the abyss. Faint variations in the structure danced in and out of sight, twisting ropes of glowing gas and dust.
Thor’s Helmet is a perfect name for the nebula.
A central star’s radiation is pushing this cloud outwards in a giant “space bubble.”
Where the celestial Norse god's face should have been was empty sky, but his beard was outlined with a sparkling of tiny stars.
The cool air of Earth blew across my face, and a few frogs down in the horse pond called in the night.
Since I don’t carry a thesaurus at the telescope, and something a hundred and eighty trillion miles across doesn’t care, I just said…
“Wow!”
Treasures from Earth
To compliment our cosmic Norse gods, here’s a great Scandinavian jam for you today (no assembly required….Ikea joke).
I first heard this piece at a live performance by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of a conductor tall enough to not need a podium. (Maybe his ancestors were Vikings.) It was a mesmerizing program, and while there’s no video, dig “the other band from Liverpool”, lead by Vasily Petrenko in this fine performance of Jean Sibelius’ “Finlandia.”
Have a groovy weekend!
Josh