Something that has always given me a strong sense of calm, and often a strong sense of wonder, is seeing something that is very far away. Being on top of a hill, or a mountain, and seeing a far off village, or town, or other mountain, that might take as much as a day or more to cycle to (I think of all land distances in terms of cycling, as all sensible folk should.) Sometimes, when on my bike, after cycling until my legs feel like they are about to fall off, I will realize I have cycled up such a massive hill that I can see the ocean in the distance. But, thanks to the fact that telescopes are relatively cheap, the furthest thing away I have ever seen is more than a day’s cycle away on a bike, in fact, it’s so far away that the Voyager space probes, which might well last for billions of years, might not last long enough to get there. But I’ll start with the furthest thing away I’ve seen over land.
The Furthest I’ve Seen Over Land
Well, perhaps I’m off to a bad start, because I can’t really give a definitive answer to this question. One time I was looking at the planet Venus with my telescope, and a flock of birds suddenly obscured the view of Venus. But, how far away were they? Fifty miles, one hundred miles, two hundred miles? I have no idea. Given that my telescope can see hills within craters on the moon, the moons of Jupiter, and the rings of Saturn, I don’t think I can definitively say they were nearby. All the same, birds are quite small objects, so we’re not talking about a colossal distance either. So they may have been the furthest collection of objects I’ve seen over land, we’ll never know.
Where it gets more complicated is trying to figure out what I’ve seen from atop the Old Head of Kinsale Signal Tower. I’m pretty sure the furthest away mountains I’ve ever seen were from here, but I don’t know which mountains I’m looking at, I know it’s possible to see the mountains of Kerry from up there, but I simply don’t have the knowledge to say which mountain range is which, or which mountain ranges I’m looking at at all. Nevertheless, because of the spectacular views from the Signal Tower, I’m almost certain this is where the furthest away Earth based thing I ever saw was (unless it was those birds!)
An example of the amazing distant views you can see from the Old Head Of Kinsale Signal Tower. Sadly I don’t know which mountain range this is.
But to get us out of this maybeism and vagueness (that needs to be a phrase!), I’ll tell you the furthest thing away I saw, where I know what I was looking at, and I know the approximate distance. That was from Camden Fort Meagher, in Crosshaven. It’s an old artillery fort that is thankfully well maintained and open to the public. From the fort I took this picture:
Camden Fort Meagher
On the horizon, you will just about see a dark shadow, right in the center. This is the Galtee mountains. I am here seeing them from about 38 miles away. And as already mentioned, I’m also pretty sure I’ve seen mountain ranges that are further away, from the Signal Tower, and there are also mountains I’ve seen from near the Coolim Cliffs. I have seen a fair few mountains that I couldn’t identify, but this is the furthest away photograph where I can definitively say what mountain range it is, and it’s at a distance of about 38 miles.
So that’s my furthest (documentable) distance seen over land. So what was the furthest distance I’ve seen in the Solar System?
The Furthest I’ve Seen In The Solar System
Sadly, I don’t have an astronomy sketch of this. I saw it with the telescope, then before I had a chance to even get my pen and paper ready the clouds rolled in, and I’ve never seen it again. I’m talking about the planet Neptune.
Neptune is 2.8 billion miles away. I am not able to visualize 2.8 million miles in my head, 2.8 million makes my brain sulk if I try and get it to visualize it, and yet, Neptune is 2.8 billion miles away. We are already getting into distances that are amazing and bizarre and ridiculous. Mars is so far away that the distances will cause tremendous problems if and when a manned expedition is sent there, and that’s relatively near by comparison. Neptune is 30 AU away, one AU being the distance from Earth to the sun. It takes light four hours to travel from the sun to Neptune.
https://science.nasa.gov/neptune/facts/
So if you had a ship that could travel at the speed of light, you’re talking about less than a day’s travel to get to Neptune. But even at that speed, you’re not getting to the next object I’m going to talk about. Maybe your very distant descendants will, but not you, because what I’m about to talk about is the furthest away object I’ve seen in the galaxy.
The Furthest Away Object I’ve Seen In the Galaxy
The distance to Neptune is 2.8 billion miles, but the distance I’m about to talk about laughs at 2.8 billion miles, a lot,it finds 2.8 billion miles to be an incredibly silly distance, much like you or I consider a distance of a quarter of a mile to be silly. The furthest away object I have seen is a globular cluster, called Messier 53, and it is 58,000 light years away.
Messier 53
I sketched Messier 53 for the first time in 2020, this one is from May 14th, 2020. If you are reading this many decades from now, I assume you now know 2020 as “The Year Of The Unpleasantness”, but it was my absolute best year for astronomy, and I found this delightful globular cluster, which is 3.4096e+17 miles away, a distance I can barely even read.
S0, how far away is 58,000 light years? Well, when you are looking at Messer 53, you are looking at it at a time when humans had only just started to migrate out of Africa. You are looking so far back in time that you are seeing to a time when humans still weren’t a globe spanning species, we were still very much a one continent species, but it was at this time that that started to change.
Now, most of you probably had your brains twisted into horrifying and grotesque shapes trying to visualize 58,000 light years. But there are some of you, a small fraction of you, assuming there are god like beings in my readership, who are probably thinking, “I am offended by this tiny distance of 58,000 light years, give me a bigger distance than that or I will never read your blog again and advise others to do the same.” Well, I find that a fairly bizarre reaction to this lovely cluster called M53, but if you want something much further away, I can oblige, because I am about to talk about, the furthest away thing I have seen in the universe.
The Furthest Away Object I Have Seen in the Universe
Caldwell 30
This is not my most detailed sketch, it’s kind of hard to pull detail out of something so faint. Neither do I think it is my most pleasant sketch to look at, I would probably give that title to one of my Mars sketches or one of my Orion Nebula sketches. But this is nevertheless, one of my absolute favourite astronomy sketches, because this is the furthest away object I have ever seen.
On the night of 26th August 2020, at around 1:15, I saw this, and it took my breath away, not because of the way it looked, I’ve seen far more beautiful objects in our night sky. But, what I was looking at was Caldwell 30, a galaxy that is 40 million light years away.
40 million light years. Closer to the time of the dinosaurs than to our current age. I was about to put 40 million into a light year to miles calculator, but would the string of numbers that came back mean anything to me or anyone else? No, my favourite way of explaining these distances to both myself and others, is to once again talk about, what was happening on Earth when the light from Caldwell 30 started its journey to us?
I’ve watched this visual representation of continental drift, many, many times since I saw Caldwell 30:
When the light from Caldwell 30 stared its voyage towards us, North America and South America had not joined up yet, and the continent of Europe still didn’t look as it should.
And around this time, we were talking about the last days of Green Antarctica. Yeah, it was so long ago Antarctica was a green wonderland of forests. Though when I say “the last days” I mean, maybe it only had one or two million years left, this kind of timescale really does a number on your brain!:
And what about humans back then? Not even close! The genus homo wouldn’t appear for another 38 million years or so!:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17453-timeline-the-evolution-of-life/
I hope this gives some kind of indication of the utter vastness of the universe, how far into space, and into time, you can see with a relatively cheap telescope. I’ve only seen, and sketched, Caldwell 30 just once, a lack of opportunities to use my telescope in light pollution free skies means I never saw it again, so the experience never went beyond that night of August 26th 2020. But I reflected on what I saw, the furthest away object I have ever seen, many, many times. And I talk about it with the same eagerness that I talk about seeing the rings of Saturn or the surface of Mars, because I saw something so far away, that the human brain can barely comprehend it, and 40 million years is quite a small distance, in this vast and wonderful universe that we have the privilege of living in.
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