Stockton Astronomical Society Valley Skies - October 2005 Issue
To the Nitty Gritty and Beyond When we sit under the simulated
night sky in the Clever Planetarium, we see a few hundred stars
from our own "neighborhood" of the Milky Way Galaxy. Whether
there or under the real night sky at Peddler Hill, what we see
is but a tiny fraction of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy.
When we contemplate the cosmos, with 100 billion galaxies like
our own, extending billions of light years from us, the numbers
and distances are mind numbing, virtually impossible to grasp.
On October 13, when Dr. Theresa McRae, Chair of the Science and
Mathematics Division at San Joaquin Delta College, leads us on a
tour of the new Center for Microscopy and Allied Sciences on the
Delta College campus, we will have an opportunity to contemplate
the equally mind boggling universe of inner space. Where
astronomy and cosmology have been empowered by the development
of gargantuan telescopes capable of "seeing" with various
segments of the ele