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lprovenIn 1610, Galileo Galilei published a small book describing astronomical observations that he had made of the skies above Padua. His homemade telescopes had less magnifying and resolving power than most beginners’ telescopes sold today, yet with them he made astonishing discoveries: that the moon has mountains and other topographical features; that Jupiter is orbited by satellites, which he called planets; and that the Milky Way is made up of individual stars. It may seem strange that this last observation could have surprised anyone, but in Galileo’s time people assumed that the Milky Way must be some kind of continuous substance. It truly resembled a streak of spilled liquid—our word “galaxy” comes from the Greek for milk—and it was so bright that it cast shadows on the ground (as did Jupiter and Venus). Today, by contrast, most Americans are unable to see the Milky Way in the sky above the place where they live, and those who can see it are sometimes baffled by its name.
[...]
We walked north along the rim trail, on which the setting moon cast long shadows. The canyon’s edge was just a few feet to our right, but I could easily tell where the path ended and the abyss began. The canyon itself was transformed. In bright sunlight, Bryce’s orange-and-white limestone hoodoos, which look a little like enormous drip castles, are so vibrant that they almost shimmer; by night, the formations are virtually monochromatic, like mountains at the bottom of the sea. Nightfall inverts the park: the cliffs draw inward, and the sky becomes almost topographical, a canyon turned upside down.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen?printable=true
[...]
We walked north along the rim trail, on which the setting moon cast long shadows. The canyon’s edge was just a few feet to our right, but I could easily tell where the path ended and the abyss began. The canyon itself was transformed. In bright sunlight, Bryce’s orange-and-white limestone hoodoos, which look a little like enormous drip castles, are so vibrant that they almost shimmer; by night, the formations are virtually monochromatic, like mountains at the bottom of the sea. Nightfall inverts the park: the cliffs draw inward, and the sky becomes almost topographical, a canyon turned upside down.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen?printable=true
