Road Trip Part Two - Hubble

(posted Monday, November 8, 2010)

Our Saturday road trip was filled with more than just Cleopatra. The Tuttleman Imax Theater was showing a 40 minute movie called Hubble.

This theater had a 4-story domed, wrap-around screen, a steep seating arrangement that tilted you backwards allowing you to see the whole screen. The seating arrangement felt alittle like sitting on steeply slanted wall and if you leaned forward too much you would topple off the wall. Of course, that is just me, - height always makes me nervous. But once the show started, it was easy to forget about the seats.

The show started with the announcer giving all kinds of suggestions, cautions, warnings, etc. etc. etc. One of the announcements said that movie cameras and flash cameras were prohibited. Hmmm... And besides - "your pictures won't turn out anyway" - pretty much what they said exactly. Well ... I am sure you can guess that wouldn't deter me. No flash, but my camera worked just fine, thank you very much!

So folks ... welcome to the universe.

Here are the Hubble telescope that made these pictures possible.

Here is the "bus" that got the Hubble up real, real high!!! :-)

Here is one of the humans who braved this dangerous trip to help repair the Hubble.

This movie pulled out many emotions from me. I started out feeling immense pride at what man can do when we set our minds to it. Many people working together to make this possible and succeeding! Makes you wonder why we can't do smaller things like balance a national budget, or get along without our earthly neighbors without anger and war. Don't you think we should be able to do those little things if we can do this big thing???

And then when we get just a peek at our universe, those images make you feel small and unimportant. Even our Hubble is just a tool to show us how little we really know. We are just a speck.

Finally, the question of "Are we alone in the universe?" seems to be obvious to me. Of course, we aren't alone. The expanse of our universe is really beyond our ability to imagine - so there must be life out there somewhere.

PS - My camera did a pretty good job even without a flash. Of course, it couldn't show the full scope of each picture, but I was centered in the seats so I figured I would capture something if I just kept hitting the button. I really didn't know what I was getting because the camera was just resting on my stomach while I snapped images. I was pleased.

I love stretching the limitations and breaking the rules.