#astronomy

In 1959 the University recognized our work by appointing me to a new Chair of Radio Astronomy. ↗

— Martin Ryle

#astronomy #chair #me #new #our

Until very recently, the heavenly bodies have been investigated only with reference to their position and their laws of motion, and a quarter of a century ago astronomy was little more than celestial topography. ↗

— George Phillips Bond

#astronomy #been #bodies #celestial #century

Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?" Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know. ↗

— Ann Druyan

#astronomy #atheism #carl-sagan #science #science

The Greek myths are a bit outdated, but not as much as the distant galaxies they remind me of whenever I look up at night. The historical and the scientific – two different aspects of the overactive imagination that fit together nicely in space. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #history #humor #imagination #myths

We are not special. We are not innovative. We do not push the limits. We are small. Pathetic. Infinity lies before us. Right in front of our eyes. Look up! It's right there! Taunting you with its blue beauty. Space; an endless continuum to explore. And we choose to stay here. We are that scared nerdy kid in his apartment on Friday nights. We are not living. We are regressing. Inventing the wrong things...to steer us away from the real entertainment. Nature, space, the heavens. ↗

— B.S. Wood

#cosmos #exploration #explore #nasa #nature

Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis. ↗

— Pierre Laplace

#atheist #god #humor #mathematics #napoleon

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth’s ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar. ↗

— Brad Leithauser

#astronomy #chile #metaphor #novelists #telescope

When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#night-sky #science #stars #science

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#inspirational #science #space-travel #inspirational

Everything in this room is edible. Even I'm edible. But, that would be called canibalism. It is looked down upon in most societies. ↗

— Tim Burton

#gluttony #humor #manners #humor