Kids in a Candy Store

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with a bunch of Scouts and their Scoutmasters and parents at PARI (the Pisgah Astronomical Research Center). Although the skies were supposed to be cloudy, we wound up with a couple of hours of pristine conditions - good transparency, good seeing.

The Double Cluster in Perseus. Photo: David J.

For 90 minutes, we cycled everyone through the scopes we had set up - an 8-inch Celestron SCT and an 18" Discovery Dob. The Scouts and their adults "ooh-ed and aah-ed" as they took turns at the eyepieces. Experiencing for the first time Jupiter's cloud bands and moons, Saturn's rings, the lovely jewels of the Double Cluster, and the awe-inspiring mist of the Andromeda Galaxy, one of the adults told me that the Scouts were acting like "kids in a candy store".

That's what we all are, we who love the night sky. We're kids, and the Universe is our candy store.

And, my goodness, we really are just kids.

The Andromeda Galaxy. Photo: David J.

When the light from Andromeda that was reflected into our eyes that night left its home galaxy (about 2.5 million years ago), Australopithecus was just beginning to figure out how to fashion rocks into tools and all of our primate ancestors still lived in Africa.

When that same light passed the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy (about 50,000 years ago), modern humans were just getting started. The first cave paintings were still thousands of years in the future, and the first farms, tens of thousands.

The Universe is old and vast, vast beyond our comprehension.

Yet here we are, the brave and curious newborns of the Universe, turning our thoughts and devices outward, trying to grasp, trying to understand. Awestruck and thrilled...

Kids in a candy store.