OUT THERE…

Our sun is one of at least 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy… and our galaxy is one of over 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. In this period of my life known as retirement, I’ve had time to think about the sizes, distances, times and relationships of the stuff out there in the awesome space we call the Cosmos… Greek word κόσμος, which is also known as the Universe, all existing matter and space considered as a whole.

I’ve had the good fortune to know two astronauts who have left Earth orbit and travelled out to the moon.  I became acquainted with William “Bill” Anders when I was headmaster at the Potomac School in the 70s and 80s. Bill, with Frank Borman and James Lovell, was one of the first three persons to leave Earth Orbit (Apollo 8 in 1968).  These three were also the first to see the whole earth all at one time and the first to see the far side of the moon. I shall never forget the time he showed me photographs he took from space… especially his favorite photograph of “Earthrise.”   Ten years after their amazing journey, with voice bright but thick with emotion, Bill told me how moved he was every time he was “out of sight” of Earth as they orbited the moon ten times before heading home. Charles “Pete” Conrad, the third man to walk on the moon (Apollo 12) was an alumnus of the Darrow School (class of 1949) where I was headmaster for a time in the 80s. Pete died in a motorcycle accident in 1999.  Bill, now eighty, lives in Washington state. 

Since Apollo 8 and Apollo 12, we’ve all seen the marvelous photographs captured from relatively tiny sections of the galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope (launched in 1990) and by the Kepler space observatory (launched in 2009). When Bill Anders and Pete Conrad made their journeys around the moon, they couldn’t see much more of the cosmos, except the moon close-up and the earth looking back on it, than we can see on any clear night in a dark place on earth.  Remembering Hubble and Kepler pictures, I thought about some of the pottery done by daughter Nancy… especially about the glazes she managed to fire onto one of my favorite bowls.  I decided that bowl should make my photos today.