Witnessing the Unwitnessable :: Essays Papers

Witnessing the Unwitnessable Against a black canvas glimmer countless particles of light. Some assert themselves as tiny pinpricks while others pool into swirls of color on the ebony backdrop. A cursory glance at these speckles might discern them as nothing but randomness, but a closer examination reveals a certain sense of artistic unity. Their palette is simple – shades of black, white, yellow, blue, red, orange – while their details are elegant. A whirl of gold dances nears a splotch of sapphire; a daub of dainty pink resembles a rose; drops of ivory encircle a void like a pearl necklace; lacy, white tendrils reach toward a spray of amber. These descriptions might hint at a painting, but in this case, the image in question has no artist – it is a photograph of deep space produced by the Hubble Space Telescope known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Taken of a random patch of sky no larger than a grain of sand over a period of three months, this photograph contains an estim ated 10,000 galaxies, each of them billions of years old. This single, tiny frame has captured the profound immensities and beautiful harmony of the universe in an image that defies comprehension. The blackness of the night sky belies the menagerie of color and light hidden from our eyes. Many cosmological objects are too faint to be seen, many emit wavelengths of light our eyes do not know how to respond to, and many (the far side of the moon, for example) are impossible to behold from Earth’s surface. Astrophotography, which will here be broadly defined as â€Å"the capturing of all images of space,† provides a keyhole through which we may view celestial spectacles we would never normally see. Photons, particles of light, are often the only evidence we have of the existence of the vast majority of the objects in the universe. By committing these photons to photographic plates or pixels, astrophotographers capture an imprint testifying that whatever emitted them exists somewhere in the infinity. Seizing photons gives us the power to transform a remote and unimaginable galaxy into a real and tangible photograph. Even more important, viewing astr ophotography raises questions about the fundamental nature of both ourselves and the universe.