Webs Wonder Design

Last Sunday night we lay on the garden trampoline and watched Perseid meteor shower. Initially we had driven up to 1,000 ft above sea level, thinking that would improve the view, but it didn’t, because much more peripheral light crept into our field of vision from distant car headlights and even more distant settlements. The sides of our valley seemed to shield us from this ‘light pollution’ so we drove home to continued our star gazing .

Most people are moved by prolonged staring into the vastness of space, and I’m no exception. As your eyes gradually adjust and focus, the few major pin pricks of light forming the well known constellations merge into the background mass of stars and galaxies. What started as an inky blackness becomes brighter and clearer and vaster.

Perseid Sky © John Chumack www.galacticimages.com

That’s when the “wow” moment happens, when you try to imagine just how far away most of those pinpricks of light are. A million miles is hard to imagine, a billion impossible for me, but conceptualizing objects 10 billion light years away is a complete jaw dropper.

Staring at a distant star or galaxy is staring at the most ancient of ancient history, because the object, at this moment in time, probably no longer exists . It’s then I start asking myself what I mean by this moment in time. Is this moment in time the same all over the universe? Quickly my my brain begins to hurt and I disappear up my own thought processes.

I could have these moments of awe (not to be confused with awful moments) many times a day, as so many things in the natural world are completely beyond my comprehension. Fortunately the requirements of everyday living preclude extensive naval gazing. There is, however, one other experience I find never fails to stop me in my tracks and for similar reasons as heaven staring.

I love old portrait photos. They capture moments in time on a human scale. Remnants of lives once led. For that brief moment in time, the subject stood and gazed into the camera and into the future. We now stare back and try to imagine life in that era. Jim Herrington, photographed and described below is a perfect example.

A distant galaxy and Jim Herrington, an Irish tramp, born 176 years ago
Click image for larger version

Jim Herrington was an Irish Tramp who traveled the roads of north Pembrokeshire working at various farmsteads, assisting in pulling turnips, slicing mangolds and harvesting the hay. This King of the Road was a veteran of the Crimean War (1853-1856). In September 1906, at the age of 75 he was found dead in an outbuilding of the Royal Oak Inn on Fishguard Square. The postcard portrait above was published by D L Lewellyn of Goodwick.

Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile. This image reveals the galaxy’s bulging central core dominated by light from a population of older, yellowish stars. A large island universe similar to our own Milky Way Galaxy, NGC 4565 is only about 30 million light-years distant, but over 100,000 light-years in diameter. Both this photo and the Perseid meteor shower were taken from the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive.

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