Home is where the heart is…and my heart is definitely here right now. Behind me was Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) and the reason I was on the mountain shooting. However the Milky Way was perfectly positioned over the Grand and Petit Combin mountains in the Val de Bagnes, viewed from Verbier in the Swiss Alps, so I couldn’t resist focussing my attention here.

The combination in one shot of mountains that are approximately 45 million years old and a galaxy that is 13.6 billion years old is quite mind boggling when you think about it. It makes me think how small and young we are in the scheme of things. It’s something I always think about when I find a spider, or small insect in my shower or house. I always carefully put it outside, making sure not to hurt it. To them we must seem immense and old. And it would be easy for us to just let them go down the plug hole (like a black hole) or stand on them and wipe them out in a second because they seem so small and unimportant to them. Next time you go to squash a bug, think of it that way!

The big bright start in the middle of the image above is actually a planet, not a star. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system at 318 times bigger than earth. Jupiter has some raging storms with wind speeds as high as 425mph (680 km/h). If you take into consideration that the highest ever recorded wind speed on earth was 253mph, Jupiter sounds like an extreme environment!

I absolutely recommend watching the movie Interstellar. I have just watched it again after 6 years, and was even more blown away by it this time. Having learned a lot more about the Solar System and Quantum Physics since then, it meant so much more to me. Nobel prize winning physicist Kip Thorne was the scientific consultant and executive producer on the film making it more scientific and close to reality than I ever imagined. The description of black holes, other dimensions and quantum caught my imagination! And apparently the research between Kip Thorne and the graphics team led to the discovery of two scientific phenomena. I’m so glad I decided to watch this movie again! It goes up there with one of my favourite all time movies.

Interesting Links:

The Science of Interstellar

The Science of Interstellar: an Illustration of a Century of Relativity with Kip Thorne

Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face