#astronomy

Let's grant that the stars are scattered through space, hither and yon. But how hither, and how yon? To the unaided eye the brightest stars are more than a hundred times brighter than the dimmest. So the dim ones are obviously a hundred times farther away from Earth, aren't they? Nope. That simple argument boldly assumes that all stars are intrinsically equally luminous, automatically making the near ones brighter than the far ones. Stars, however, come in a staggering range of luminosities, spanning ten orders of magnitude ten powers of ten. So the brightest stars are not necessarily the ones closest to Earth. In fact, most of the stars you see in the night sky are of the highly luminous variety, and they lie extraordinarily far away. If most of the stars we see are highly luminous, then surely those stars are common throughout the galaxy. Nope again. High-luminosity stars are the rarest. In any given volume of space, they're outnumbered by the low-luminosity stars a thousand to one. It's the prodigious energy output of high-luminosity stars that enables you to see them across such large volumes of space. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#physics #death

The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star. ↗

— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

#astronomy-vs-gastronomy #food #happiness #food

And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink. ↗

— Honoré de Balzac

#gluttony #happiness #pleasure #food

Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#cosmology #life

Cuisine is a universal and mixed-race love marriage, in which man sublimates a place and a culture. ↗

— Marc Veyrat

#love

Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy. ↗

— Hannes Alfven

#astrology #astronomy #believe #every #few

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth. ↗

— Voltaire

#astronomy #daughter #daughters #dominated #earth

I'm interested in astrology and astronomy. ↗

— Emm Gryner

#astronomy #i #interested

You will certainly not doubt the necessity of studying astronomy and physics, if you are desirous of comprehending the relation between the world and Providence as it is in reality, and not according to imagination. ↗

— Maimonides

#astronomy #between #certainly #comprehending #desirous

But my most favourite pursuit, after my daily exertions at the Foundry, was Astronomy. There were frequently clear nights when the glorious objects in the Heavens were seen in most attractive beauty and brilliancy. ↗

— James Nasmyth

#astronomy #attractive #beauty #brilliancy #clear