So it was a clear night last night, though there was a very bright moon. Though one lesson astronomy has taught me repeatedly, even when I won’t listen, is take what you can get! You’ll like a clear night with a bright moon much better than you’ll like a moonless night that is cloudy!
Messier 92 is one of my favourite globular clusters, and I was amazed how much detail I could see despite the bright moon. When I got the new telescope I had to choose between two things I really wanted, a new more powerful telescope and getting one of my guitars customized so that it allows more versatile playing. Needless to say I ran up to the top of a mountain and yelled don’t make me choose, oh cruel fate! But seeing that level of detail with a blindingly bright moon, it was incredible! I wasn’t sure any telescope could have managed that.
Messier 92 is about 26,700 light years away from the solar system. Sometimes these distances are just meaningless numbers to us, the mind can’t wrap its head around it. The furthest away I have ever been is Hungary, which according to my back of the envelope calculation (metaphorically, do you really think I’m organized enough to have an envelope handy?) is 1200 miles away. That’s about 2000 kilometres away, though I don’t like describing things in kilometres because kilometres are the tool of the devil.
So the way I visualise these distances in the only way my non super powered brain can is to ask the question, what was going on on planet Earth when the light from Messier 92 started its journey to Earth? Well, around this time somebody made the Venus of Dolní Věstonice, one of the oldest known examples of ceramics in the world. During this time, Ireland, mainland United States (the big bit that isn’t Alaska!), Iceland,Scandinavia, Hawaii and New Zealand to the best of our knowledge hadn’t yet been discovered by humanity. If you lived during this time, it wasn’t that you would have found it more difficult to get to these places, it’s that you wouldn’t have known these landmasses even exist. And this was also during the last ice age, so if you think we have cold winters now, well…
And at this point you may be thinking, talking about these times in the far past is giving me a time related headache, can we talk about a more recent time, such as January 27th, 1994? No I’m afraid we can’t, I’m afraid we can’t indeed! Be prepared for the biggest time related headache you have ever experienced! How old do you think Messier 92 is? When I look at it through my telescope, it certainly doesn’t look like it’s falling apart and being held together by duct tape. But appearances can be decieving. Messier 92 is one of the oldest globular clusters in the galaxy, it is estimated to be more than 12 billion years old! That means that it has existed for the vast, vast, vast majority of the time that the universe existed. To put this into perspective, when Earth hadn’t yet formed, when our solar system was still just a cloud of gas, Messier 92 was already at least 8 billion years old! Sorry for giving you severe time related brain aches, but I hope you found all of this informative all the same!
Sources:
Venus of Dolní Věstonice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Doln%C3%AD_V%C4%9Bstonice
Places Humans Hadn’t Discovered Yet:
Messier 92’s Age:
Ponderings Of An Autist 
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