These days that many of us leave the big cities, we can see the sky in a very different way. If the night is clear, once it gets dark we should look up. there we will find the greatest show in the world. The constellations appear to us with their enigmatic structures, but also the Luna with its regular changes of phases and the planets that move like wanderers between the stars. At the beginning of August the Shooting Stars they make us spend the night outdoors to see which will be the most spectacular. Now we also have some new objects that are the satellites that are populating space by the thousands. To better see the sky, we are launching instruments beyond the atmosphere like the ‘James Webb’ telescope that open new windows to the universe. We will never tire of looking up.
Of the clues that remain to us how our ancestors thought thousands of years ago, we must conclude that the movements of the stars were one of their main interests. We have all over the world traces of astronomical observatories sometimes very complex. The fate of humans seemed to be linked to the movements of the stars that often sent indecipherable messages. One of the founding gestures of modern science was made by Galileo Galilei when first pointing a telescope skyward. There he discovered the sunspots and the satellites of Jupiter, observations that opened new paths to astronomy and scientific thought. Behind the, Isaac Newton He began what would be called celestial mechanics, which allows us to understand and predict the movements of the stars. Since then we have not stopped perfecting telescopes. We have made them more powerful, we observe other radiation such as that detected with radio telescopes and we have placed them in such special places as the mountains of the Canary Islands, Hawaii or Chile.
The latest astronomical instrument is the ‘James Webb’ telescope launched in December 2021 by NASA with collaborations from the European and Canadian space agencies. It is one of the most complex instruments ever built. It began to be manufactured in 2004 and has cost about 10,000 million dollars. Its 6.5-meter-diameter mirror unfurled upon reaching its destination 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, at a place where the gravities of the Sun and Earth balance. It is 100 times more sensitive than its predecessor, the ‘Hubble’ telescope, and detects above all infrared radiation that opens a window to more distant objects. The first images that have reached Earth show us the qualities of the new telescope with which it will be possible to have clearer images of the structure of objects in our galaxy and beyond.
Space has become a place of commerce and competition that we are filling without much control with objects that observe us, and with garbage
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But if we look at the sky we will see more and more frequently the presence of human objects. On the one hand, the lights of airplanes that pass through their air routes. Behind these lights there may be dozens of people going on vacation or to work or perhaps returning home half asleep. If you look out the window you will discover the lights of our towns. On the other hand, we will also see the lights of satellites moving across the sky in all directions. The price of launching satellites has come down a lot and now there are thousands of objects that observe the Earth or transmit messages. Some are military, many private. The sky has become a space of commerce and competition that we are filling without much control of objects that observe us, and of garbage.
We keep looking at the sky as we always have. We are looking for the origins of the universe and its dynamics and maybe one day we will even find signs of an inhabited planet. We develop technologies that allow us to send exploration objects into space and some are already thinking of exploiting resources found in asteroids or planets. The starry sky tells us about the origin of the universe, about the history in which we have lived with myths and scientific discoveries, and about the future in which our activity spreads throughout it. The great spectacle of clear and starry nights continues to fascinate us and is a mirror in which our history is reflected. Looking only at ground level or glued to screens impoverishes our lives.