It's not possible to see the milky way with the naked eye in the USA because of our excessive street/car lighting etc. All those lights wouldn't be necessary if you could actually adjust to the dark by not having bright lights shining directly in your eyes all the time. Too little light never hurt anybody's eyes, but too much light easily can (even the reflection of the sun on a glossy car can damage your retinas). There's nothing nearly that glossy in our ancestral habitat. Moonlight is plenty for navigation and reading if you give your eyes 10-30min to adjust (without being screwed up by glare from artificial lights).

I don't know why I said planets, I meant stars. My point is, optical telescopes can't see the center of the Milky Way because we're far out on the edge and there's too much stuff in the way for us to see (optically) the center.

>> ^jimnms:
If it sees in visible light, how can it observe planets orbiting a black hole at the center of the Milky Way?



3:12 - It's watching the stars that orbit the black hole.

If it sees in visible light, how can it observe planets orbiting a black hole at the center of the Milky Way?

Milky Way time-lapse, taken from the Paranal Observatory. Home of the VLT.

Knowing you have a love for all things spacy, I thought you might enjoy these.
http://www.videosift.com/video/Milky-Way-Time-Lapse
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Very-Large-Telescope-VLT

Yah but we're talking 90" focal length compared with 30", 300% more light collection and a huge jump in resolution. It's hard to compete with big APO refractors for planets.

BUT.... lets look at the Orion Nebula with each scope and see which one can show the wide view : ) Lets pan the Milky Way and see which one takes in enormous starfields. Your 6" f/5 has its merits.

I have a hard time getting along with fast scopes, I am also using an f/9 refractor these days. I miss the wide fields though.

Why is everyone harshin' this vid? I thought it was fucking amazing! First one with a wormhole to the centre of the milky way LMAO. But seriously wouldn't it be great if the human race would grow the fuck up?

"I'm not very good at singing songs"

No, but you sure could write some beautiful poetry:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch

You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes

You might emerge somewhere else in space

Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us

If we do not destroy ourselves

We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits

Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise

A morning filled with 400 billion suns

The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths

Of exquisite interrelationships

Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully

On how well we understand this cosmos

In which we float like a mote of dust

In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect

It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes

it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one

Has an elaborate logical underpinning

The brain has it's own language

For testing the structure and consistency of the world

[Hawking]

For thousands of years

People have wondered about the universe

Did it stretch out forever

Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes

From dark matter to a possible big crunch

Our image of the universe today

Is full of strange sounding ideas

[Sagan]

How lucky we are to live in this time

The first moment in human history

When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean

Recently we've waded a little way out

And the water seems inviting

I went to visit a childhood friend in Sweden, he lived near Sollentuna just outside Stockholm. His house looked out on what seemed like endless forest. We got drunk one night unable to hold down some whiskey, went out wandering the fields smoking cigarettes and chanced upon a bridge in a open plain, it was twilight, we lay down on the bridge rails, watching over a star filled sky beaming at us, you could clearly make out the milky way. We tried trace out satellites fly overhead. We saw a light dance in the sky wavering and wished it was a UFO.

Eventually the sun will stop or the milky way will collide with andromeda - I think that can be described as an event. But anytime soon? Hell no.

We do not have to win 1000 lotteries and on specific days. The universe does. And with each planet being a ticket, the metaphorical(?) probability you're proposing seems easily obtainable, if not a given.



>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.

Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)
It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.
It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.

Yeah. And remember the time factor. In those billions of years that have passed since the universe began, what are the chances of us being alive at the DURING THE SAME SPAN OF TIME as another intelligent species? Let alone aliens being out there and within reach. Take a look at the average life span of the species on earth - it isn't very long at all. You need an appropriate star, an appropriate planet, the planet to be during the prime period for life to develop, the necessary environmental and evolutionary developments to have taken place to allow an intelligent creature to prosper..
Not only have you got to win 1000 lotteries, but you have to win them all on specific days.
Reminds me of the weak anthropic principle - the question of "why are we so lucky that we find ourselves born into life in the most hospitable perfect area of space and time which allows us to live" is answered by "because if we weren't in this perfect area of space/time, we wouldn't be here to ponder such a thing".

>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.

Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)
It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.
It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.


Yeah. And remember the time factor. In those billions of years that have passed since the universe began, what are the chances of us being alive at the DURING THE SAME SPAN OF TIME as another intelligent species? Let alone aliens being out there and within reach. Take a look at the average life span of the species on earth - it isn't very long at all. You need an appropriate star, an appropriate planet, the planet to be during the prime period for life to develop, the necessary environmental and evolutionary developments to have taken place to allow an intelligent creature to prosper..

Not only have you got to win 1000 lotteries, but you have to win them all on specific days.

Reminds me of the weak anthropic principle - the question of "why are we so lucky that we find ourselves born into life in the most hospitable perfect area of space and time which allows us to live" is answered by "because if we weren't in this perfect area of space/time, we wouldn't be here to ponder such a thing".

>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.


Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)

It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.

It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.

throbbin et al,

you are clearly okay with disrespecting individuals, and even groups of individuals - but not certain groups of indiviudals?

are you some sort of alien parallel universe time child or something? because your logic just does not mesh with the physical constants of the universe as they exist here on earth in the milky way galaxy circa 2009