Friday 3 April 2009

Orion? At this time of year?

Dan got quite shirty with me a few months ago when I misidentified a constellation. Now, serendipitously, xkcd has immortalised the exchange:

1 comment:

The Plashing Vole said...

Posted on behalf of Gerry - former astronomer-royal:

I'm sick of trying to comment on your blog and then failing to work out the stupid procedures for registering, so here's a comment on your nomenclature entry:

Dear Vole
You apparently misidentified an astronomical constellation earlier (shame), and now you compare the indifference of management with the lack of note that the Milky Way will take of the approach of the Voyager probe. I feel compelled to point out that, technically, we are always already IN the Milky Way: it is our home galaxy and although the term 'Milky Way' refers to the dense clouds of stars that are visible at night as a band across the sky (when we are effectively looking through the plane of the galactic disk we inhabit) to pretend that it is 'elsewhere' is erroneous. We exist within its vast interstellar spaces, children of its atom-rending element-producing cataclysmic explosions, adrift in its cosmic indifference and subject to its inexorable forces. Just like management really.