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nmazca.com : skychurch
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| last updated: 2 may 2007 | ||||||||
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The night after my father's death, I had a vision from space. I mean to say that in some way, I was able to behold space as if I (or my father's spirit, traveling through the void) was hovering above the sun. Deep but warm blackness was all that lay beyond the curve of the star. I recall seeing feet hovering over the yellow surface. They were black also -- or is it better to say that they were the color of nothing? In any case, the perspective soon changed and I was able to perceive an approach to another planet, and then Earth (in what I recall was only a matter of moments). I can't recall if the journey continued past our planet, although I want to say it did. There was much more grandeur, depth, serenity, silence and speed to this experience than I am able to convey. I had been sitting in my car near Ocean Beach in San Francisco when this vision came to me. After I opened my eyes, I looked up into the sky and I immediately had a stunning realization. There I was, sitting on a miniscule tangent on the surface of Earth, looking across a quarter-million miles of space toward the near-full Moon. Further along the ecliptic I saw Jupiter and Saturn and a handful of bright stars that lay millions of miles further distant. In that moment, I understood that I was not looking "up" into "the sky." I was in fact gazing out across a planar surface that ran parallel to the Earth's equator. Along one vector was the Moon... further along others were Jupiter and Saturn... and on thousands of other trajectories were the stars that inhabit our galactic neighborhood. Our galaxy, in turn, is part of cluster of galaxies that is nestled within a ridiculously, unbelievably wide area of space. In all the time that I had pondered and studied astronomy, after all of the late nights and early mornings spent staring up from city porches and desert plains, it was only on that night that I conceived the scale of what exists beyond Earth. This made the planet seem so small, and me -- my idea of me -- so much smaller. At the same time, to be able to comprehend this scale, to look into the universe and get some grasp of its depth, its simultaneous dynamism and stillness, was a source of renewed wonder. That the human mind can conceive of such emptiness and energy is a wondrous gift. It is an indication of each person's potential for boundless understanding, and I hope that everyone will come to realize (or reacquaint themselves with) this potential at some point in their lives. In order to achieve this understanding, you don't need to buy a super 'scope with all the gadgets, memorize the coordinates of the 100 brightest stars, or be able calculate the times of planetary conjunctions in the year 2012. You don't even need to peer into space. You simply have to stop and see that which surrounds you, and appreciate that the same energy and essence resides within you and envelops you at this moment.
The partial solar eclipse
The total lunar eclipse
The total lunar eclipse
The total solar eclipse
(Eclipse path and climate maps
The total solar eclipse
The total solar eclipse
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 Annular solar eclipse, OSU campus, Jun 94
Follow this link in order to find out more about that event. |
 Andromeda galaxy low to the northwest, Los Cerrillos NM, fall 99
Follow this link in order to find out more about that event. |
 Snapshot of the sun from Chicago, 2 Apr 2001 -- date of X20 solar flare Follow this link in order to find out more about that event... and the flare that followed two years later.
Follow this link (and this one) in order to find out more about that event. |
 Balsamic moon, Doha, Qatar, Oct 04
Follow this link in order to find out more about that event.
Follow this link in order to see some more photos of that event. Follow this link in order to see more photos from Egypt.
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