On February 26, 2020 SpaceWeather.com reported on
the near-equilateral triangle that formed briefly
deep in the Big Dipper:
Comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4),
the Owl Nebula (M97),
and the Surfboard Galaxy (M108).
The notice arrived from a cascade of innovation:
anticipated altitudes and azimuths calculated to within milliseconds of arc and time,
light captured with refraction exquisitely minimized and distortion compensated,
image sensed by a carefully calibrated megapixel charge-coupled device,
selected samples convolved, corrected into one, refined, compressed,
fragmented and transmitted from Eichgraben to Aspendell,
assembled, verified, annotated and published
to reach and transfix this subscriber.
Beautiful, no?
Or is it just me?
Myron Pulier is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School with longstanding involvement in applying technologies to delivering mental health services.