Two more items for today, which I decided not to squeeze into the previous post.
I’m giving today’s APOD post some prominence because it evokes memories of my amateur astronomy days, but especially the one time I ever saw the Zodiacal Light: on a trip to Death Valley, some 30 years ago, when I was supporting a group of bicyclist on a ride from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney.
The sky is not as deep or dark anywhere in the US, I suspect, as in Death Valley. On that night I remember that the Milky Way was obvious, but there was also this other glow, another band of soft light, that aligned along the ecliptic, the plane of the solar system where you see all the planets. I’ve never been in a place to see it again.
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My explorations into posts on Big Think triggered a memory of one of the very earliest virtual communities, one founded by Stewart Brand (and Larry Brilliant) way back in 1985, before the internet, but when online communities first began to exist. See Wikipedia’s article on The WELL.
