Mom's bookshelf

I visited my mother on Mother's Day and noticed this scene on her bookshelf.

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.

Last Chance to See - The Radio Show

Considering that Last Chance to See involves a favorite author of mine, Douglas Adams, you'd have thought that I'd have heard the radio show by now. But no. Seeing my deficiency, I tried to rectify it over the weekend and started listening to the program. I'm only a couple episodes in and it's good. Peter Jones, who voiced The Book in the H2G2 radio and TV shows does the narration. In the episode I listened to last night, Adams and Carwardine go into a Chinese store to buy condoms so they can cover their mic for some underwater recording. But it's also depressing. That episode featured this creature:



That's a baiji or Yangtze River dolphin. The show was recorded in 1989 and there were estimated to be only 200 left at the time. Today, the animal is considered to be extinct due to fishing, getting chewed up in propellers on the crowded river, etc.

The entire series can be heard at the BBC site linked above.

I have the book too which I shall have to read soon.