In a week of mass natural destruction and death, state execution and civil murder, I gazed up into the night sky last night and wondered at just how small we are in the scale of things.
I could see Ursa Major clearly with my naked (but corrected) eyesight. I was not prepared for the detail that burned onto the sensor of my camera in the slightly overexposed 20 second exposure. Had this been a daytime shot I woud have thought I was suffering from senor dust.
Instead, I was left wondering at just how insignificant we are. Having rooted around the foot of the fossil laden cliff at just 2.4 Million years old I could not compute the depth or magnitude of the night sky revealed on screen. Seeing strata in layers in the cliffs gave an approachable scale to things. Hubble pictures of other worlds have almost come to be accepted as the norm in the last 25 years. The Plough is just about all I recognise in the night sky as astronomy is not something I have had an interest in after being disappointed as a child at not seeing Sputnik zooming past in the night sky.
So, we as a race can make things like the Hubble and sensors such as on the Nikon D810, conduct judicial and civil murder yet have no control of the forces of nature.
Yes, we have come a long way but when I think of the ancients plotting the night skies I do wonder if it is just but one footstep in the scale of things.