THE USM SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM

207-780-4249     www.usm.maine.edu/planet

70 Falmouth Street     Portland, Maine  04103

43.6667° N                   70.2667° W 
Altitude:   10 feet below sea level

Founded January 1970

Julian date:  2458619.5

        "Where the outside inside is turned inside out."

THE DAILY ASTRONOMER

Thursday, May 16, 2019

In a Fern Forest in the Fimbulthul Stream

was* a planetarium the size of what on Earth would be considered a sizable lake.  In fact what I assume was the floor was smooth as sheer ice and in the low light one could only barely perceive its opposite edge just behind a milky white nebulous reflection.    Of course, one hardly noticed the shadowed periphery once the trail of dazzlingly bright, multicolored dots appear.       Their first appearance was quite shocking, like an unexpected detonation of laser light.    However, soon after their arrival, these dots swiftly and gracefully glided along the surface.  Yet, they did not merely move in a straight line like well trained soldiers.  Instead, some bobbed up and down, while others appeared to float in various directions as though the train was undergoing a slight dissipation.    After their third appearance, I decided to follow them and had to maintain a steady pace to keep them in sight.     

As you might expect, those dots represented stars.   Planetariums throughout the world and cosmos are so notorious for focusing principally on stars that one wonders if they aren't horribly misnamed.**   These stars were tracing and retracing paths that extended from one size of the planetarium to another.  As I ran forward I realized to my shock that it was an open planetarium: a mile high tower generated the star dots that were so bright I could only barely perceive a semicircle of ivory light protruding above the actual horizon.   Along the edges I saw towering structures: amphitheater seating extending up many stories.   Everything was deathly quiet as all the seats were unoccupied.   Apparently, this system was automated and going through the motions despite the lack of any audience, apart from myself.  (I would later learn that it was programmed to turn on whenever any sentient being -or a close approximation -entered the facility.     It gave me a warm feeling to know that the facility probably burned through immense amounts of electricity just to entertain me.)  

The dots were of varying intensities as each one represented a star of a particular brightness.    Apart from their speed, they were easy to follow as one never lost sight of them, even when in the center of the planetarium floor where I beheld an unfathomably vast sphere of stars all scintillating like ice crystals in the luster of moonlight.     Even though the inscription was naturally indecipherable,  I knew it to have been Omega Centauri, one of the galaxy's richest and most populous globular clusters.    And that meant that the dots moving rapidly across the floor were likely representing the members of the Fimbulthul Stream!   

No, I really can't pronounce that word, even though it was coined on Earth.   That name derives from Nordic mythology and was one of the eleven rivers that existed at the world's beginning.    The Fimbulthul in this context is a stellar stream.   Those hardly garner the attention they deserve.  They are collections, or associations, of stars orbiting a galaxy that were once actually part of a globular cluster or dwarf galaxy.      There are many orbiting around the Milky Way.     The Fimbulthul stream is actually quite small and contains a few hundred stars.  (By contrast, the Monoceros Ring wraps around the Milky Way three times and is 200,000 light years long.)

This remarkably large planetarium was* situated on a planet around one of the stars comprising the Fimbulthul Stream.   Some of these stars move through Earth's skies, but they are quite faint.      It is one of the many stellar currents and eddies that meander through what seems to be a quiescent night sky.        These stars were torn away from Omega Centauri by tidal forces a long time ago.       In deep time, the stellar stream will dissipate, as all associations do.

A bit breathless after chasing these dots across the vast floor, I just sat and watched them cycle through a few more times:   replaying the dynamic interplay of the Milky Way Galaxy and globular cluster as the latter loses stars to the former.    I was wondering if I were going to actually encounter anyone else, but would learn in time that during these excursions to off world planetaria I would never be able to interact with anyone.  Only otherwise unoccupied planetaria would be accessible.  As it turns out, that is all to the good.      Nobody would believe my stories about these travels if I claimed to have ever met an alien.

*As the planetarium existed about 45,000 years ago, it seems logical to use the past tense.  

**(Oh, I should here explain that this was one of my first excursions to a planetarium off world.   Yes, I don't blame you for your skepticism.   It seems as though a small aperture along the floor leads to a conduit that connects planetaria throughout not only the world, but galaxy as well.   The corridors have so far only directed me only to the truly immense planetaria: a true delight for one who is ultra-sensitive and afflicted with a troubling size preoccupation.)   

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