The Placerita Canyon Nature Center hosted a space-themed presentation in which participants got the opportunity to look at astrophotography on Sunday afternoon.
The event was called “Deep Space Shots” and showed astrophotographer John Favalessa’s work from his backyard and Mount Pinos in the Los Padres National Forest, among other places.
“But it was visual eyepieces, and I just loved being out in the night sky and just behold, you know, the psalmist in the ancient world, the Old Testament. He wrote, you know, the heavens declare the glory of God and show his handiwork, the firmament shows his handiwork and man, it does. You see it, you feel it,” Favalessa said.
Favalessa added that astronomers are not religious usually but are theists because the world is too “fantastical,” as he called it, to just say it was random molecules slamming into each other to make the universe.
He added that looking up at the night sky brings him peace.
One attendee, Johan Vandersande, said that he loves astronomy because he cannot understand it all.
“I’m saying if something, I’m an engineer, and if something is explainable and mathematically understandable, it becomes basic. If you can’t imagine it, and you don’t understand how it happened and why, and why it’s there, then it becomes something magical,” Vandersande said. “I think that is a great way of putting it. It’s magic for a scientist or technical person like me. It’s magical as opposed to factual … That’s what’s fascinating about it.”
One thing Vandersande wanted to let the community know is that they should be humble.
“And I don’t think we know it all we control it all, because we don’t. It makes you thankful to be alive,” Vandersande said.
Carolyn Arnold decided to attend the presentation because she loved astronomy.
“I love life. And looking up at the stars, it makes you feel so very small,” Arnold said with a smile on her face.
She added that these events help inform the public and to keep looking up at the sky.
