[Darksky]Star Eaters (fw)

[Jan Hollan]

The text seems so refreshing to me, 
I hope another people will be glad to find it here.

Jenik

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 7 Sep 2001 09:06:14 -0000
From: OutdoorLighting-ForumAyahoogroups...
To: OutdoorLighting-ForumAyahoogroups...
Subject: [OL-Forum] Digest Number 281

Message: 1
   Date: (unknown)
   From: John Gilkison <jgilkisoAzianet...>

               STAR EATERS

 I was reading some publication the other day with the usual description
of stellar distances and the vastness of the galaxy we live in. The
analogy (the usual one we see) went something like if such and such a star
winked out during the battle of Hastings we would just now be finding out
about it. Only this book had the added twist of some galaxtic star eating
machine invoked to explain the stellar dissapearences.

 What if there were some really big Borg like Star eating Cube that was
roaming around our neck of the stellar woods eating stars I thought? What
consternation this would cause! Why, I can see the emergency meetings of
the UN Security Staffs now, as well as the all nighters of the JCOS's. Yet
there I was near downtown Las Cruces, NM (at NMSU) and I went outside to
look at the 2 or 3 dozen stars in the sky the city lights had left for my
edification and enjoyment, and I puzzled over the general lack of concern
about our own Borgnagian Star Eating Machine.

 Somehow it all seems a matter of perspective, or a lack thereof. Even
though this very same machine is warming up the planet, and eating its own
children so to speak, it fails to garner much serious attention. And so I
went home to my nearly Full Moon lit skies and the the many hundreds of
stars that can be seen from this more favored location away from the
blessings of city lights and all this talk of uniformity, pole spacings,
and safety. I went home to sanity, to what is real, as opposed to the
worldview of our totally fantasy driven current brand of civilization.
Burnham was right, it is to put it mildly, disquieting!

*
John Gilkison
President, National 
Public Observatory
jgilkisoAzianet...
www.astronomy-national-
public-observatory.org