Our Galaxy and the Geminid Meteor Shower.

A little astronomy for today's post and I hope you find it interesting.  I could write and write and write about the stuff out there in the universe but to save on your eyes I will only touch on a couple of things.  The first is an early reminder so you will not miss the Geminid Meteor Shower.  This time, the peak shower will happen at night in dark skies.  No full moon to drown out the shower.  This will happen on December 14th, so mark your calendar and enjoy the show.

I was on an airplane traveling to New England one time when I looked out the window and saw the streaks of a meteor shower.  What worried me a little was that the streaks went well below the height of our plane, which meant they could hit us in mid-air.  Of course the chance of that was very slim and thankfully it didn't happen.

Now a little about our galaxy, the Milky Way.  Its total mass, including dark matter, is one and a half to two trillion suns.  I sure don't have enough fingers and toes to count that high!!  And did you know that the diameter of our galaxy's disk is about 150,000 light-years across.  Those old sci-fy TV shows must have had some super fast space ships to fly across a galaxy and then on that even larger jump through empty space to another galaxy.  Oh, but Captain Kirk managed to do it.

Here is what our galaxy would look like from Captain Kirk's ship:

But since my feet are planted firmly on the ground, this would be the best that I could ever hope to see:

 I am going to keep this short and (hopefully) sweet.  But before I go I want to tell that when I was young and my parents and I went to visit my grandparents, as we were leaving my grandpa always said to me "Keep looking upwards".  I believe he meant it in a religious sense but I don't think he would mind if I do both and look at the skies on a dark night.  Now, take time to step outside tonight and see what you can see and have a great evening.  Keep looking upwards, you hear?