My son and I spent the night at the Orlando Science Center. We were there with our Church’s Cub Scout Pack. There were other Packs and even some Brownie “Packs” there too.
Checked in. Dinner buffet. A presentation called “KA-BOOM”!!!! Private admission to cool exhibits. But wait, there’s more.
We capped off the night with two really unique experiences. In fact, I had never done either in my fifty years.
We used two very powerful telescopes to view the Moon and Saturn.
The Moon? Astonishing to be on earth and see what we saw with our own eye.
Saturn? WOW!
Saturn last night was 857 million miles away. To say this another way, it was almost a billion miles away. Billion. Ya with me?
While it was tiny, we all knew we were looking at the real deal. Not a photo. Not a TV show. Not a DVD program. The real thing.
Saturn is about eighty times bigger than Earth, by the way.
To be able to see something soooo big, yet so far away, and it shows up as a tiny, but absolutely crystal clear image, is, well, almost indescribable.
Afterwards, we all slept in “Dino Digs“, a huge and very well done Dinosaur exhibit.
My son and I slept direclty beneath “Stan’s” enormous jaws. Stan is a T-Rex, named after the archaeologist that discovered him. What made “Stan” famous is that 70% of his bones were found; more than any other T-Rex.
We had a great time and have some great memories. In the big picture, that’s about as good as it gets. Carpe diem, jeff 🙂
