The presence of water in a gas giant (the only type of planet identifiable at present) is no more indication of the possibility of extraterrestrial life than … what was I saying?
I have no doubt of extraterrestrial life, I mean, it would be foolish (considering the sheer number of galaxies and subsequent solar systems that we have documented… practically nothing on the cosmic scale) to think otherwise. I wonder at the mentality those who consider life beyond our own system “controversial”.
I guess humanity still wants to be the biggest fish in the pond.
That’s actually completely inaccurate anymore. Smaller planets have been discovered as well. After ten years with our local planetarium you learn a few things.
No - though most of my time was there when it was still Hansen Planetarium. I worked in the education and production depts. Miss doing the star shows! I still spend a fair amount of time over there however, seeing what’s new, visiting old friends and every now and again helping with the odd show.
Very cool!
The planetarium is one of the activities (among many others, of course, one per week) we always try and take our group of disabled individuals to, sometimes twice a year.
Its been many years now since the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto was shut down. I think they ran out of money and imagination long before they ran out of things you can do with that big ol’ Zeiss projector.
It’s a shame really. Simillar thing happened here. Our old projector “Jake” was parted out and so far as we know mostly ended up in a museum somewhere in S. Africa. Now they use the Digistar III exclusively. It’s a far cry from the beauty of the older projectors, but because it can render fuzzy images full dome in sad washed out colors and stars look more like fuzz balls…it’s somehow “better”.
Sometimes I look at these and think, “That has got to be photoshopped.” It seems too colorful and of such incredible perspective that it can’t be real. Great stuff, Denny.
And most of the photographic ones use “false color.” Basically, each color usually stands for a particular type of cosmic radiation. They pick vibrant colors to show the “information” in high relief, and to look cool. Visually, many of the amazing clouds and the like would probably look white, or be invisible.