Great and Small

Last Saturday I was treated to a view of Saturn by one of my neighbours who had set up a telescope in the Co-op grounds (apparently you can borrow a pretty fancy telescope from any of the astronautic societies when you become a member -what a deal). What I saw through the little lense was a miniscule grey orb surrounded by those unmistakable rings (just like this pic)...fleeting out of the viewfinder at a steady speed. When I saw the planet, I started getting nausea as if I had vertigo... it looked so real, and so far!
I have always been awed by the stellar bodies of outerspace, but I can't quite get a grasp of their proportions. I am fascinated by the sheer size and number of these things that live in neighborhoods whose addresses require whole blackboards of equations and a few PHD's to pin point - out there in the unimaginable emptiness of space where even light takes decades to travel. I never really can get a real sense of scale on them - I mean, how do you visualise millions of light years?
Though I am able to pick out a few of the planets and constellations out of the night sky, nothing compares to the sheer number of lights that can be see when you are out of the reflective light of the urban centres. When I was living in the country, I was amazed at how bright the night sky was with its shimmering of lights from worlds that seem to go on forever. Looking up at them, sometimes I would feel like I was going to fall down...
I don't take much notice of the stars nowadays as I go on in my day to day; I forget their greatness in my routine. But what an impression they make when you see them live...really adds a sense of perspective to life. When you think of their sheer vastness, how can you not help but feel small - and insignificant!
In Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, there is a torture machine which can break even the strongest of wills by simply showing the torturee the huge size of the universe in comparison to them. When compared to how unbelievingly huge the universe is, one person's will just doesn't stand a chance - the survivors of this torture machine end up as vegetables.
I do wonder how come I felt nausious as I saw the little planet - it must have been a kind of circuit breaker - meant to self protect (though I could easily have fallen and hit my head on a planter) It was a very visceral reaction for sure and it was different from seeing a picture, that little image had a scale that I could grasp. Well check this out for size.

"A handful of sand contains one millions grains of sand, one thousand handfuls make a billion. there are one hundred billion individual stars within our galaxy, and there are at least 50 billion galaxies in the universe...there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand in every beach on earth" - The Planets, BBC. (NB: they are reffering to stars, not planets!)

Check out "The Planets", it's an 8 part series done in 1999. It's very thorough and informative, and there is no shortage of "whoa!" moments in it ...and great graphics.
or check out the NASA site...http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1
- if you have read this far, then I might be able to get you copies of the Planets - just ask
...more to follow - I smell a sequel!