A random post about the sky

So today is the day when Jupiter will be the closest to earth, and so the easiest to see.

It hasn’t been so close in 59 years, the year I was born. And it won’t be so close again for 107 years. Which means none of us alive today will be alive when it comes around the again. That’s kind of humbling.

So the other night I pulled out my telescope and spent an hour or two just looking up into the night sky. It was a beautifully clear night like it hasn’t been for a long time. And you could see Jupiter, brilliant and bright like a diamond in the night. I believe it’s the second brightest thing in the sky after the moon during this time.

I worked hard to try to get a picture of Jupiter with its moons through my telescope. It looked glorious, and you could see the colors of the planet. Its moons always strike me as little stars or again little diamonds in this vast setting.

I was able to take, this picture which is nothing compared to what I could see by my eye. But you could at least see some of the moons.

It is amazing just to stand outside and look into the night sky and just think about how far it goes on.

The other day Lauralea and I were driving somewhere listening to the news reporters saying that scientists were going to do an experiment on an astroid. They were going to crash a spaceship into an astroid to see if they could affect its trajectory.

Interestingly this is also is happening tonight, and while Jupiter is 367,000,000 miles away from earth, this astroid named Dimorphos is about 6 1/2 million miles away from earth. But don’t worry, you don’t stand a chance of seeing it happen.

You see Dimorphos is a space rock that measures 525 feet across, 6 1/2 million miles out there in space. And the spacecraft that will hit it is about the size of a small car and will be traveling at 15,000 mph when it hits the rock.

So what struck me anew is that we are going to send a small car sized spaceship, 6 1/2 million miles out there in space to hit a rock a bit larger than a football field, at a point out in space where they will perfectly intersect one another.

And still, we are told that the universe exists today because of a state of randomness. That things happen without order.

I know of course that they have their arguments to answer my questions. And Lord knows I am a simple man and I am lousy with math. But if we can pick a target out in space, 6 1/2 million miles away and have a small car hit a rock in that place years later, I just fail to see an argument for randomness.

Life is not random.