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thousand stars
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Milky Way galaxy, and the planets slowly making
Today we live largely cut off from this spectacle, with smog and light pollution
*obscuring our view of this *perpetual cosmic drama, the unfolding of which
once seemed intimately connected to questions of both natural and social order.
But if we want to see Mars as it appeared ancient humans, access to a clear night
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sky is only half of our problem. We also have to put ourselves in their minds.
[ 1 ] We have seen the surface of the Sun, the landscapes of Mars, the
atmospheres of Venus and even Jupiter. We've discovered moons around other
planets, and have found icy ocean worlds among them. We've used modern
physics (to *infer the existence of black holes, and have now even "seen" them
(with powerful radio telescopes.) We know that stars are bright orbs powered by
*thermonuclear fusion. We know that within the observable universe, many
billions of them (a septillion, in fact, with twenty-four zeros) are packed into 170
