Human Vision and The Night Sky

For years, the images have blazed through your imagination. They are the magni?cent full-color photographs returned by the Hubble Space Telescope and 1 its sister Great Observatories of the grand depths of the cosmos.From the “pillars of creation,”considered to be Hubble’s signature image, to the incomprehensible depths of the Hubble Deep Fields to the intricate details imaged in the surface and cloud tops of Mars or Jupiter, the power of the Hubble Telescope to turn on the public to science is unparalled in the history of modern culture. They also have spurred new telescope sales to unimagined highs.And after years of watching the heavens through the eyes of NASA, you’ve decided it’s time to see it for yourself. You make the trip to the department store and pick up that shiny new “500×”te- scope,set it up and soon you’re in business. Unfortunately,the high initial expectations usually give way to disappointment. Instead of seeing the magni?cent swirling clouds of gas in the Orion Nebula,you see a pale green-gray cloud with a couple of nondescript stars lurking nearby.The swirling red, yellow and brown storms of Jupiter are nowhere to be seen; only varying shades of gray in the planet’s cloud bands,assuming you can see bands at all! And Mars? After waiting all night for the red planet to rise up over the morning horizon, you are greeted by nothing more than a featureless reddish-orange dot.

Michael Borgia is a jet pilot instructor for Flight Safety International, and in his spare time a member of Delmarva Stargazers Astronomy Club. He has been an amateur astronomer for 30 years – since his childhood. He believes that he has been in every situation, asked every relevant and irrelevant question, and experienced every frustration known to amateur astronomy. He is the author of numerous training documents for Flight Safety and American Flyers, including full-length technical training texts.