March 16- May 29, 2009
RCOS 20- inch, SBIG STL-11000 1,089 minutes Luminance, 105 minutes Red, 63 minutes Green and 126 minutes Blue (All unbinned)
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NGC 5033
Read the background article for a full description
Children May Safely Sleep
It's interesting how the innocence and naivete of children sequesters them in a world of cartoon shows filled with talking animals.
Adults also live an insulated life. For example, they sometimes find comfort that a new calamity, disaster or crisis will leave them, their family or friends unaffected when it's realized to be unfolding on another coast or continent far out of everyday sight.
However, the Universe that engulfs us is filled with routine violence on an unimaginable scale. Like a movie explosion projected in extreme slow motion, the unprecedented events captured in astronomical images often depict the fates of other Suns, other worlds that we have not experienced.
But, the great distances that separate stars and galaxies is beguiling. It encourages the past to be presumed as the harbinger of the future for us here, too.
Well so far, we've been lucky.
So, at least for the moment, here's one more blessing to enumerate: it's fortuitous that children may safely sleep tonight again on this planet. Tomorrow's luck may be different.
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