Photo # 1 (Dec 2009)

NGC 253: DUSTY ISLAND UNIVERSE

I often begin my Monday master class at Walnut Hill with a topic that has only tangential relationship to music. It is a way of getting the students to think of their lives in a wider context than the daily routine of practice, classes, and occasional performances.

I wasn’t altogether prepared for the mastery with which they spoke of both music and the space program as possibility. Here are some of the spontaneous expression they jotted down in class, addressed to the people I was about to meet at NASA.

In the same way NASA uses mathematics and machinery, we musicians must use sound. Sound can explore the soul, coax out dreams and possibilities that before were lost in inky blackness. A beautiful sonata escapes gravity. We are not very different, you and I. Our minute individual persons are small, but our life-journeys can span galaxies. NASA is granted billions of dollars and, for the insistence of possibility it bestows on the world, it is worth every penny.

                                          - Amanda Burr, age 16

From: Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility – Transforming Professional and Personal Life. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press 2000, p. 174-5.

Credit & Copyright: Star Shadows Remote Observatory and PROMPT/CTIO
(Steve Mazlin, Jack Harvey, Rick Gilbert, and Daniel Verschatse)

Shiny NGC 253 Galaxy, is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, and also one of the dustiest. Some call it the Silver Dollar Galaxy for its appearance in small telescopes, or just the Sculptor Galaxy for its location within the boundaries of the southern constellation Sculptor. First swept up in 1783 by mathematician and astronomer Caroline Herschel, the dusty island universe lies a mere 10 million light-years away. About 70 thousand light-years across, NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest to our own Local Group of Galaxies. In addition to its spiral dust lanes, striking tendrils of dust seem to be rising from a galactic disk laced with young star clusters and star forming regions in this processed color image. The high dust content accompanies frantic star formation, giving NGC 253 the designation of a starburst galaxy. NGC 253 is also known to be a strong source of high-energy x-rays and gamma rays, likely due to massive black holes near the galaxy's center.

We are a part of a vast universe. Stargazing helps us appreciate this; helps us to reach beyond our little selves - into the vastness of the collective consciousness where we are all part of a oneness with all that is.
                                 - Dan Benor, MD