*ASTRONOMY a la CARTE (NIGHT SESSION)* Monday, November 12, 2018 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. $12 enrollment ($20 for two people) [image: hubble_big_bang.jpg] No, to be honest, I cannot even imagine! That is in response to the question, "Can you imagine how we can know about distant star clusters and galaxies?" No....it is preposterous to conceive of the notion that we subatomic little dots of intelligence on a mote-like world have somehow managed to understand the incomprehensibly large and unfathomably remote island universes scattered all throughout spacetime like glittering (insert diamond reference) over (insert velvet reference). After all, just one hundred years ago -an eye flutter in the cosmic scheme- some astronomers were still unsure if our galaxy was alone in the Universe. Now, by heavens, we know that the Milky Way is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe. Those galaxies contain millions, billions and, yes, even hundreds of trillions of galaxies!* Tonight, use the these miraculous minds of yours to explore the farthest reaches of the cosmos which, staggeringly, might be just one of myriad Universes. We'll expand our view to the most distant boundaries to see how galaxies differ, evolve and even collide to form larger galaxies. While we're out there, anyway, we'll explore star clusters: the small, young, compact, high energy galactics as well as as the bloated, old, expansive, globulars milling around galactic halos. These clusters populate our universe by the billions! [image: M45-A01w.jpg] *Pleiades Star Cluster: * The Seven Sisters a galactic star cluster in Taurus [image: 1024px-Omega_Centauri_by_ESO.jpg] *Omega Centauri: * A stunningly beautiful, and exquisitely named, globular cluster in the constellation Centaurus. The class ends with a showing of "Hubble Vision 2," a program that explores the Universe entire: from the nearby star clusters to the most distant globulars and far flung galaxies. *Yes, hundreds of trillions! For instance, the most luminous galaxy yet observed in the Universe contained 300 trillion stars, or thereabouts. Named Wise J224607.57-052635.0, this bulging behemoth of a bright galaxy dated back to the earliest epoch about 12.5 billion years ago.