Nerdfighteria Wiki - Orbital Sunrise: The First Art Made in Space

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has a beautiful explanation as to why Van Gogh’s masterpiece has resonated for over a century.

“You know what I like about The Starry Night?

It’s not what Van Gogh saw that night, it’s what he felt.

[The painting] is not a representation of reality and anything that deviates from is reality that has filtered through ... See more

He thought about space the way he thought about mathematics or analytic philosophy or the Torah or Mozart’s twentieth piano concerto, which he sometimes played at night when my sister and I were going to bed. It was beautiful and complex and infinite, and how could you not want to explore that, know where it came from, know where we came from?

As every child knows, a body must orbit something – so the earth orbits the sun, and the moon orbits the earth. The sun is the earth’s focal point, and the earth is the moon’s focal point. This is quite straightforward – but I have discovered that the more I learn, the more I’m apt to be confused. In fact, there are two focal points inside the orbi

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