Celestial Navigation Quotes

People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens of the firmament, the sun and the moon. This fool wishes to reverse the entire scheme of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

My desire is to bring astronomical events and objects down into your personal, lived-in space.

It is time that we steered by the stars, not by the lights of each passing ship

In October, 1865, occurred what was, in my eyes, the greatest event in the history of the observatory. The new transit circle arrived from Berlin in its boxes.

A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.

Heaven is tens of thousands of leagues from earth. Yet with the help of a few figures, one may determine the positions and trajectories of celestial bodies. So while Being is immense and its manifestations marvelous and limitless, it follows none the less a constant rule.

Space is dark but, of course, when we're on the sun side of the Earth, we're in full illumination and we have all the reflection of the Earth below us, beautiful blue Earth and we're in daylight. Only on the back side, opposite side of the sun, it seems like night to us, too.

I would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

After decades of hauling telescopes around in the back of vans and going up to high altitude locations and so forth, I did finally build an observatory, here on Sonoma mountain.

Columbus found a world, and had no chart save one that Faith deciphered in the skies.

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

The astronomer will believe that the most erratic comet will yet accomplish its journey and revisit our sphere; but we give up those for lost who have not wandered one-half the distance from the centre of light and life.

Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe's distant past.

On my first flight, I don't know if maybe it's a function of time, or if I was less stressed on my second flight, but just being able to tell what part of the planet we were flying over by the reflected light coming through the window - that was pretty special.

Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.

It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

An astrolabe is relatively unknown in today's world. But, at the time, in the 13th century, it was the gadget of the day. It was the world's first popular computer. And it was a device that, in fact, is a model of the sky.

ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.

If you start out with a little telescope observing the stars and you keep at it over the years, as I have, it's kind of a dream to one day have an observatory where you can always go and use the telescope conveniently.

Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.