Comments on: Omega Cen’s millions of stars

By: Mark Hansen

Mark Hansen — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:16:20 +0000

Perhaps this was inside the monolith that Dave Bowman entered…

By: TheWalruss

TheWalruss — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:54:55 +0000

Oh yea! I read that story way back in middle school!

Good call, Kuhnigget!

By: kuhnigget

kuhnigget — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:32:01 +0000

@ Tom ‘n’ Craig ‘n’ Walruss:

For an interesting take on what it would be like to live on a planet within a globular cluster, read Isaac Asimov’s classic story, Nightfall.

It chronicles a civilization on a world orbiting within a multiple-star system, which is in turn located in the heart of a globular. Because of their multiple suns, their “night” only falls once every two thousand years when all of their suns are eclipsed by moons. Unfortunately….heh heh…read the story.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:27:38 +0000

Ooooh! Shiny!

By: TheWalruss

TheWalruss — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:34:48 +0000

I lived for a year on a lake in the middle of nowhere. Every night and every morning I’d go out and just look around. Sometimes it would be the clouds, or snow, or ice crystals, or rabbits, or trees, or reeds shifting in the wind that would create that aesthetic tingle I was looking for.

But by far the most powerful was the clear sky – the Milky Way spinning overhead bold and bright. I would stare straight up for what seemed like hours, mouth agape, until my girlfriend got annoyed or afraid I’d get frostbite or die of hypothermia and call me inside.

Imagine the view from within that cluster!

By: Mark Hansen

Mark Hansen — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:32:17 +0000

I remember the first time I saw Omega Cent through a telescope. At very low magnification it looked like a smudge of talcum powder on black velvet. Then the higher magnification and “Oh wow!”

By: llewelly

llewelly — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:24:57 +0000

Time for a little pop-psych. We know what makes a man handsome and a woman beautiful, why green grass is nice and so forth – but why are some of us so pleased by celestial objects?

It’s those damn aliens in their UFOs. Always abducting us and screwing with our gene pool. It’s alien genes that make us long for the stars.