Robert Bigelow spoke at the June meeting of Humanists of Utah on the history of astronomy leading up to current happenings in the scientific field. Robert ably filled in for Richard Cox who had a last minute conflict.

After a short summary of historical perspectives of our solar system, which was considered to be the universe, Robert Bigelow showed pictures taken by cameras aboard the Hubbell telescope. He explained some of the repairs that astronauts made and showed some before and after images that elucidated the benefits of the maintenance. The Hubble space telescope stands as a tribute to human ingenuity and creativity. It is controlled by a series of gyroscopes that allow land based scientists to use a large number of sophisticated instruments on board to study images throughout the universe.

Many of the images presented were taken from telescopes that operate in the non-visible portion of the light spectrum. We saw super nova, red giants, many star "nurseries," probable developing solar systems, and many other wondrous sights. Perhaps the most interesting image was taken of what was thought to be the edge of the expanding universe, a place thought to be void of structures. The picture at first appeared to contain hundreds of never before seen stars, but on closer inspection, the "stars" were actually galaxies! Bigelow explained that the image had caused astronomers to increase their previous estimate of the number of estimated galaxies from about 100 billion to 400 billion.

Robert asked us to consider the number one billion. He indicated that if we were to receive $1000 every day, it would take over 2700 years to accumulate $1,000,000,000! And Carl Sagan is famous for the phrase, "billions and billions"--almost unimaginable!

--Wayne Wilson