Its an incredible Universe we live in.

This Universe is full of wonder. I am constantly amazed by just how incredible our Universe is. I've been watching the wonderful "Voyage to the Planets" series that aired on ABC1 recently and it is just fantastic. The images they have generated from the data that the various probes we have sent out into our solar system have collected are just mind boggling. The episode on Jupiter (my personal favourite planet) was fantastic. Despite the fact that I know a trip to Jupiter would be lethal due to the radiation field around it I still think that it would be one of the most amazing sites to see. A planet that over 1000 Earths could fit inside with a storm that has been going for over 400 years and could swallow our little world. Twice. Incredible.

But what was even better was seeing the scientists admit to what they don't know. So many of the moons in the solar system have features they can't explain such as Triton , Iapetus, Hyperion and Europa. And we know next to nothing about Pluto. Yes, yes, I know it's no longer classified as a true planet (its O.K. Pluto, I'm not a planet either) but we've observed it for 80 years now and still we know only it's relative size, orbit, a little about its surface and the fact that its main satellite, Charon, is about half its size. I'll be waiting with excitement to see what the New Horizons probe that will arrive in 2015 shows us about our closest dwarf planet. Who knows what it will show us about the Kuiper Belt objects it may encounter?

Another mystery is exactly what shape is our galaxy? Astronomers have a pretty good idea based on observations but exactly what it looks like will likely never be known. To get a good look we'd need to travel about 50,000 light years straight up or down relative to the galactic plane and that's a feat that will likely never happen in my lifetime or Alex's. Still, I wonder what the night sky would look like from a planet who's star lies about 20-30,000 light years above or below the galactic plane? How amazing would it be to look up at night and have the sky dominated by the swirl of a galaxy. The band of the Milky Way that we see is beautiful but how much more grandiose would the whole spiral be? That would be a sight I'd love to see.

I would have loved to do astronomy if only I could have dragged myself through the basic vector and optical physics classes at uni. I know they are essential to the higher-end stuff but really, they bored me to tears. Still, I just love to look up at the night sky.