Feeling awful as in full of awe

I saw Deep Sky over the weekend.

The prophetic words of Douglas Adams came to mind: "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."

It was wonderful to see a documentary on the IMAX again - one made for the format.

Deep Sky has a running time of about 40 minutes so it quickly ran through the story of getting the James Webb Space Telescope up into space and into its viewing position nearly 1 million miles from Earth. While the telescope's mirrors aren't as big as space, the mirror array was pretty large, as mirrors go.

But it was the photographs of space that were the main attraction. This was perhaps as close to a Total Perspective Vortex as we'll get. It was one amazing view after another. First we saw what to our eyes is a teeny tiny speck of black space become under the JWST's probing mirrors a menagerie full of galaxies. Hundreds of them. Thousands! Then came a series of photos of colossal clouds of interstellar dust and gases that churn out stars like our sun. The Pillars of Creation!

Contemplating the vast distances between our blue ball and those star factories as well as the sheer size of those clouds was absolutely mind boggling, truly awe-inspiring.

I came out of the theater a bit exhilarated yet feeling quite insignificant. Also hoping that we get more IMAX documentaries here in Madison.