Just one Astronomical Unit. Just one Star. (Daniel Erickson)

Just one Astronomical Unit. Just one Star.

My father died recently. In the nearly three weeks since his death I have had mostly clear skies here, but have also had to travel there for his last days and subsequent service last week.

One afternoon while there, I stole the chance to escape the demands and the grief and drove myself up to Kings Canyon National Park, in California, not far from his house. There you can find one of the few remaining groves of the giant sequoia tree (Sequoiadendron giganteum). These are the most massive creatures on earth, and among some of the oldest, as well.

Walking in that grove of trees has always allowed me to use all of my senses to put me in touch with what is truly real. As astrophotographers we are accustomed to thinking about the vastness of time and space, and even our own insignificance, but we often do it "at a distance" and only with our eyes. It can be clinical and scientific. We can avoid the truth of the matter, if we want. With the Sequoia, all of your senses become engaged and the true meaning of our scale on this Earth becomes real in a very different way.

We are simultaneously so insignificant and not at all so insignificant. When we experience, we become the eyes and ears and all the other senses of the universe. We bear witness to what is.

So, here in this picture which does not capture the size of the sequoia, looking up, we scale back from light years and parsecs from galaxies and clusters of thousands, to the approximately 250 feet to the top of this sequoia and then the remaining one astronomical unit (0.0000158 ly) to our sun, a rather mundane, G2V star in a rather mundane galaxy in a vast universe. Our little Sun, simultaneously insignificant and so very significant; just like each of us.

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Description: Find the two people near the big tree. Gives you some perspective.

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