Stellar

Lindsay and I went to see Interstellar yesterday. It's very rare that I go to the movies these days. I just can't handle all the people and the popcorn chewing and the talking and the cell phones lighting up. But a Wednesday afternoon showing of a movie that has been out for months is ideal. I really wanted to see this in the theater because I think that's how grand movies should be watched. And holy cats is this movie grand! It blew my mind! I loved it. I loved its vastness and how epic it felt. I loved the science. I loved that it clearly had a lot of CGI in it but didn't feel like it at all. I loved all the big themes in it about our responsibility to our families and life on Earth as well as our responsibility to science and exploration and humanity. And I loved it despite only understanding about 65% of what was going on and despite both Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway being Oscar winning mumblers.  The whole thing felt like something new.

I was going to start in about how I've been thinking a lot lately about science and religion and how they come together. But that could turn into such a long post because I have a lot of thoughts on the subject. Maybe some day. So instead, because the movie was so much about space travel and what's out there, I'll just show you this picture of our giant neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy:

This is a close up of a much larger picture Hubble took of a section of the galaxy. And you're probably thinking, as I did, that it looks kind of grainy, like someone scattered sand over it. But that's not sand. It's stars. Each one of those itty bitty little pixels is a star. And what look like big stars in the picture are actually star clusters, some with hundreds of thousands of stars packed into just a few light years. You can read about it and see better pictures of it here. That's also the link to follow if you're looking for a good astronomy blog. You were looking for one, weren't you?