Astronomy Quotes - Page 2

It doesnot matter; there’s many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us ofa night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphereof its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to theastronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of itslight--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering.

Joseph Conrad

Maybe some people don't feel scared when they think about comets and supernovas. Maybe they think it is wonderful.

Lydia Netzer

Above and behind them the Dipper turned on its great handle as if to pour night itself out onto the dreaming continent and each of its seven stars gleamed from between the fitful clouds.

Paulette Jiles

Algol is the name of the winking demon star, Medusa of the skies; fair but deadly to look on, even for one who is already dying.Ah, the bright stars of the night.Almost they obliterate the clear white pain. A thousand stars shining in the ether; but no dazzling newcomer. And so little time left, so little time...Yet still two-faced Medusa laughs from behind the clouds, demanding homage. Homage, Medusa, or a sword, a blade sharper than death itself.The wind stirs. Night clouds obscure the universe. A lower music now, a different kind of death.No stars tonight, my love.No Selene.

Elizabeth Redfern

Timing is easy to predict through the movement of the stars as they give the propensity of pure potential.

Ambika Devi

Surely it is a great thing to increase the numerous host of fixed stars previously visible to the unaided vision, adding countless more which have never before been seen, exposing these plainly to the eye in numbers ten times exceeding the old and familiar stars.

Galileo Galilei

Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.

Carl Sagan

I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me. I have observed stars of which the light, it can be proved, must take two million years to reach the

William Herschel

ASTRO-GYMNASTICSGo on a starlit night, stand on your head,leave your feet dangling outwards into space,and let the starry firmament you treadbe, for the moment, your elected base.Feel Earth's colossal weight of ice and granite,of molten magma, water, iron, and lead;and briefly hold this strangely solid planetbalanced upon your strangely solid head.

Piet Hein

There is nothing particularly special about that location of the centre of mass. If you were to find yourself at the precise spot that is the centre of mass of the earth-moon system, the only thing unusual that you would notice is that there would be one thousand miles of rock on top of your head.Pluto is only about twice the size of Charon, so if you put Pluto and Charon on the cosmic seesaw you would find that the balance point is a little bit outside Pluto, rather than inside it. Again, there is nothing particularly special going on there. If you were to find yourself at that precise spot, you would only notice that you were very, very cold and could no longer breathe.

Mike Brown

We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.

William Herschel

Astronomy is, not without reason, regarded, by mankind, as the sublimest of the natural sciences. Its objects so frequently visible, and therefore familiar, being always remote and inaccessible, do not lose their dignity.

Benjamin Silliman

This success permits us to hope that after thirty or forty years of observation on the new Planet [Neptune], we may employ it, in its turn, for the discovery of the one following it in its order of distances from the Sun. Thus, at least, we should unhappily soon fall among bodies invisible by reason of their immense distance, but whose orbits might yet be traced in a succession of ages, with the greatest exactness, by the theory of Secular Inequal

Urbain Le Verrier

Our universe grants every soul a twin-a reflection of themselves -the kindred spirit - And no matter where they are or how far away they are from each other- even if they are in different dimensions, they will always find one another. This is destiny; this is love.

Julie Dillon

If there is anything that can bind the mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can reconcile us with our fate so that one can enjoy living,—then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy.

Johannes Kepler

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Carl Sagan

An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy.

J.B.S. Haldane

The telescope, in enabling us to look far out into space, also allows us to look back in time. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second. When we look up into the daylight sky, we are not seeing the sun as it currently is but as it was about eight minutes ago, since it takes that long for the light radiating from this familiar star to travel 93 million miles to Earth. Similarly, when the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) receives light waves from the depths of the universe, those waves will have originated from points as far as 76 sextillion (76,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles away. It will have taken those waves some 13 billion years to arrive on earth, meaning they left their source about a million years after the big bang, and roughly nine to ten billion years before Earth even formed.

Richard Kurin

Staring at the blue sky causes insomnia to occur in the human.

Steven Magee

I have been through the OSHA system twice and I can confirm that I did not have the right to a safe workplace or whistle-blower protection on either occasion.

Steven Magee

The biggest surprise that I had during my time in high altitude astronomy was being prevented from arranging a free Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) onsite evaluation to assist with bringing the observatory into OSHA compliance by the upper management team that I reported to.

Steven Magee

When I worked in high altitude astronomy, the worst sickness that I experienced was not at the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea Observatory (MKO) in Hawaii, it was at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in Arizona at the much lower altitude of 6,875 feet. Due to my very high altitude experiences, I knew that this strange sickness was not primarily caused by altitude sickness and was most likely Sick Building Syndrome (SBS). After reporting various behavioral problems in all of the staff to the management team, my contract was not renewed, I was unable to legally protect the health and safety of the workers that I was responsible for, troubleshooting of this environmental problem stopped and I left in a sickened state for my next position before I could find the root cause.

Steven Magee

When the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) found out that Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were going to visit the site to assist in bringing it into legal compliance, they freaked out! They insisted that the visit had to be canceled and the result was that I eventually became so sick from the toxic workplace environment that I had no option but to leave.

Steven Magee

One of my astronomy managers used to tell me that liquid nitrogen was harmless and was just liquid air. He would pour it onto his bare hands to demonstrate how safe he thought it was. I was later to realize that incompetence was a feature of high altitude astronomy.

Steven Magee

When I saw how many people were objecting to the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea, I realized that there needed to be an open and honest discussion about the toxicity of the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit and the health and safety issues of astronomical observatories.

Steven Magee

His laws changed all of physics and astronomy. His laws made it possible to calculate the mass of the sun and planets. The way it's done is immensely beautiful. If you know the orbital period of any planet, say, Jupiter or the Earth and you know its distance to the Sun; you can calculate the mass of the Sun. Doesn't this sound like magic?We can carry this one step further - if you know the orbital period of one of Jupiter's bright moons, discovered by Galileo in 1609, and you know the distance between Jupiter and that moon, you can calculate the mass of Jupiter. Therefore, if you know the orbital period of the moon around the Earth (it's 27.32 days), and you know the mean distance between the Earth and the moon (it's about 200,039 miles), then you can calculate to a high degree of accuracy the mass of the Earth. … But Newton's laws reach far beyond our solar system. They dictate and explain the motion of stars, binary stars, star clusters, galaxies and even clusters of galaxies. And Newton's laws deserve credit for the 20th century discovery of what we call dark matter. His laws are beautiful. Breathtakingly simple and incredibly powerful at the same time. They explain so much and the range of phenomena they clarify is mind boggling. By bringing together the physics of motion, of interaction between objects and of planetary movements, Newton brought a new kind of order to astronomical measurements, showing how, what had been a jumble of confused observations made through the centuries were all interconnected.

Walter Lewin

Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite ‘telescope envy’ at gatherings of amateur astronomers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree.

Richard Dawkins

But every day I go to work I'm making a bet that the universe is simple, symmetric, and aesthetically pleasing—a universe that we humans, with our limited perspective, will someday understand.

George Smoot

It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can.

Bill Bryson

There are reasons to doubt that what we call the laws of physics necessarily apply everywhere in the universe—or that they were applicable to every time in its history.

Michael Brooks

I think that the event which, more than anything else, led me to the search for ways of making more powerful radio telescopes, was the recognition, in 1952, that the intense source in the constellation of Cygnus was a distant galaxy—1000 million light years away. This discovery showed that some galaxies were capable of producing radio emission about a million times more intense than that from our own Galaxy or the Andromeda nebula, and the mechanisms responsible were quite unknown. ... [T]he possibilities were so exciting even in 1952 that my colleagues and I set about the task of designing instruments capable of extending the observations to weaker and weaker sources, and of exploring their internal structure.

Martin Ryle

With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary—the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation.

Edwin Powell Hubble

The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons.

Edwin Powell Hubble

Herschel removed the speckled tent-roof from the world and exposed the immeasurable deeps of space, dim-flecked with fleets of colossal suns sailing their billion-leagued remoteness.

Mark Twain

Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all.No judgment implied. Just an observation.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science literacy is being plugged into the forces that power the universe. There is no excuse for thinking that the Sun, which is a million times the size of Earth, orbits Earth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

If the whole world shared such experiences, we would then have common dreams and everybody could begin thinking about tomorrow. And if everybody thinks about tomorrow, then someday we can visit the sky together.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

One of the most striking results of modern investigation has been the way in which several different and quite independent lines of evidence indicate that a very great event occurred about two thousand million years ago. The radio-active evidence for the age of meteorites; and the estimated time for the tidal evolution of the Moon's orbit (though this is much rougher), all agree in their testimony, and, what is far more important, the red-shift in the nebulae indicates that this date is fundamental, not merely in the history of our system, but in that of the material universe as a whole.

Henry Norris Russell

Majority of people find that nature is anything that walks and grows on planet Earth, astronomers have found that this nature stretches way beyond our atmosphere as far as we can see in to the Universe.

Michel Reitsma

The more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I look forward to the day when the solar system becomes our collective backyard—explored not only with robots, but with the mind, body, and soul of our species.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

...look up and see the madnessorganized in the stars.

Kelli Russell Agodon

The stars, like dust, encircle meIn living mists of light;And all of space I seem to seeIn one vast burst of sight

Isaac Asimov

I'm confused. You make me confused. Just one glance at your eyes can mess up my whole world. My whole inner universe. The stars in my constellation are burning from the want to be in your eyes. They want to find the peace in those oceans. But you couldn't feel the burning light of my stars. You couldn't see the burning emotion of my body. So you walked away from my universe, leaving my lonely stars in the dark.

Enna Margo

He had never been satisfied and never would be. It wasn't success he craved, or even fame, it was history: he wanted to crack the universe open like a ripe watermelon, to arrange the mess of pulpy seeds before his dumbfounded colleagues. He wanted to take the dripping red fruit in his hands and quantify the guts of infinity to look back into the dawn of time and glimpse the very beginning. He wanted to be remembered.

Lily Brooks-Dalton

Though we might like to think so, humankind is not at any special, unique or privileged location in the gargantuan, perhaps infinite, Universe.

Eric Chaisson

Away from the safety of your home, the universe was not made for your convenience.

Edward Witten

At every level in our inventory, nothing seems special about our Earth, our Sun, our Galaxy, our Local Group. Evidently, mediocrity reigns throughout. Such is our niche in the Universe.

Eric Chaisson

There is talk of a new astrologer [Nicolaus Copernicus] who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must . . . invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth.[Martin Luther stating his objection to heliocentrism due to his Scripture's geocentrism]

Martin Luther

Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?[Lutheran theologian Abraham Calovius illustrating his objection to heliocentrism due to the Bible's support of geocentrism]

Abraham Calovius

[They] pervert the course of nature [by saying] the sun does not move and that it is the earth that revolves and that it turns.[John Calvin illustrating his opposition to heliocentrism in a sermon due to the Bible's support of geocentrism]

John Calvin

For who could better describe the eye than God, Who made it? But as it is clearer than the day that God has left a good deal to our own efforts ... we should really follow in these things the thread of nature, by which first principles, reason and daily experience lead us. Therefore, He prompts the minds of great men to inquire into the nature which He created, and He furthers and conducts their studies. These things must be enough to us, and from Holy Scripture we should seek in the first place only those things which are necessary to salvation.

Georg Joachim Rheticus

One of the biggest lies that is currently being told in the USA workplace is on the legally required OSHA poster: All workers have the right to a safe workplace.

Steven Magee

Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of intolerance and persecution—unresisting victims in the crusade which ignorance and fanaticism are ever waging against science. When great truths are driven to make an appeal to reason, knowledge becomes criminal, and philosophers martyrs. Truth, however, like all moral powers, can neither be checked nor extinguished. When compressed, it but reacts the more. It crushes where it cannot expand—it burns where it is not allowed to shine. Human when originally divulged, it becomes divine when finally established. At first, the breath of a rage—at last it is the edict of a god. Endowed with such vital energy, astronomical truth has cut its way through the thick darkness of superstitious times, and, cheered by its conquests, Geology will find the same open path when it has triumphed over the less formidable obstacles of a civilized age.

David Brewster

If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, geography, history or philosophy, if it is not inspired concerning slavery, polygamy, war, law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of men, women and children, what is it inspired in, or about? The unity of God?—that was believed long before Moses was born. Special providence?—that has been the doctrine of ignorance in all ages. The rights of property?—theft was always a crime. The sacrifice of animals?—that was a custom thousands of years before a Jew existed. The sacredness of life?—there have always been laws against murder. The wickedness of perjury?—truthfulness has always been a virtue. The beauty of chastity?—the Pentateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt worship no other God?—that has been the burden of all religions.

Robert G. Ingersoll

At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached, until it raced past them faster than he could blink, and they were in twilight... For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky.

Ted Chiang

In high altitude astronomical facilities we routinely discharged large amounts of nitrogen gas into closed spaces. We were never informed by the astronomy management team about the abnormally low oxygen environments that the use of liquid nitrogen creates, how long term exposure to it manifests itself in human health and the resulting abnormal mental behaviors.

Steven Magee

The toxicity of medical and industrial gas to the human depends on where it is used. A gas that is regarded as safe in a well ventilated environment at sea level may be a toxic gas in an indoor environment at high altitude.

Steven Magee

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Astronomy Quotes - Page 2

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