Diwan Ghazza's amateur
astronomers took off on a journey through the nebulae, the spectacular
paintings across our vast universe..
To kick start the event
I delivered a cosmic perspective talk:
''The nebula is a beautiful cosmic
contradiction, you may ask why?. It's in these deep beauties lies the secrets
of star birth and death. When you gaze at a nebula you may find yourself
wondering about what it once was, you start thinking about the colossal
loss of the star death, the huge explosion that left this cosmic rubble, state
of sadness might overcome you, and you start grieving this loss, and for a
moment you forget about all this expanding space around you and you'd feel
stuck in space and time..
But there's another side to the
nebula story. A nebula is also the home of new beginnings, you might find
yourself gazing with optimism wondering about the future potentials being
born in front of your eyes, how many news stars are being formed, how many
new solar systems and how many of them could form planets that could support
life.. you find yourself light-hearted with happiness and you start
to see possibilities where you thought they would never exist.. It depends on
how you see it, so let your cosmic cups be half full today and let our journey
through the nebulae inspire you to see the optimistic
possibilities.''
I finished my talk and scanned the
audience and I was overjoyed to see smiles on their faces, they seemed
receptive and excited, and then the movie rolled, we started watching the
documentary ''The Nebulae'' from the TV series ''The Universe'' a
production of History Channel.
''Nebulae are everything in the galaxy that
stars are not''
An hour long of beautiful imagery of the
colorful glowing clouds of gases known as nebulae. We felt what it would
like to fly ''inside'' the Orion Nebulae, a breathtaking experience! The film
also featured a segment on Astrophotography, how some amateur astronomers take
their equipment and camp and spend hours and hours trying to catch
the perfect photographs of the cosmic wonders especially nebulae.
.
After the documentary, Khaled Shehab, one of the team's organizer's presented a slide show themed ''We Are The Universe'' to point out our connection to the nebula we just watched and how the universe is not something that's ''out there'' not something that is disconnected from us but in fact it's something within us.
''We are all connected;
to each other biologically,
To the Earth, chemically,
To the rest of the universe atomically.''
- Neil DeGrasse Tyson
I'm so proud of the Diwan Ghazza amateur astronomers, you guys are astronomically amazing! :)
