Pizza and stars May 28, 2006
Posted by dorigo in astronomy, personal, social life.add a comment
Yesterday evening we had a pizza with some friends at a restaurant in Venice. The table was set on a small square surrounded by houses, so all the kids (there were six of them) could play there while we relaxed. It worked quite well.
Later we brought our friends to our place and I showed them Saturn, Jupiter, and a globular cluster. As always, people are most impressed by Saturn, with lots of "ooh", "aah", "wonderful", "I did not know one could actually see those rings"… While the beauty of a M13 will typically get a "oh, yes, there it is", or "is it that dusty thing there ?".
People tend to be unable to appreciate the enormity of the universe as seen from an eyepiece. They are more familiar with earthly distance scales, and thus a planet like Saturn will be more easily appreciated.
I know Saturn is a jewel of a view, but most casual observers of the night sky would be impressed much more by observing a galaxy or globular cluster, if they ventured to think at the vastness of space and our insignificance when compared to billions of galaxes at millions of light years of distance.
