This year

We are bounded in a nutshell of Infinite Space: Week 12: Free Form #17: This year

One more semester is about to end. I’ve been a year at Harvard, and it’s hard to believe 4 seasons have gone by. But this year has only gone by so quickly simply because of the sheer lack of pause. Every day, there are more than enough activities and events of every kind, be it presentations, classes, concerts, free food, or incredible opportunities. One such use of my time has been this class, Astronomy 16, an introduction to the physics of stars, planets, and the formation of the individual objects we study. After taking astronomy 17 last semester, I guess I had a bit of an insight going into the class, being less daunted by most of the material, and comfortable with the style of the class.

This being said, the difficulty between the courses was hardly noticeable, both requiring different approaches to learning and facing different kinds of problems astronomy is constantly berated with. From finding ways to cope with a huge source of light blocking our view for most of the day (Thank you, Sun, we love you (and need you to survive)), to coming to terms with only seeing the past as we look at the stars, Astronomy certainly has its unconventional problems. Furthermore, the portions of astronomical thought which deal with these realities (so pretty much all of it), are my favorite parts of the discipline. Throughout the semester, we consistently dealt with the origin of the light we see, stars and other objects which tell us how “life” (?) is in other sectors of the cosmos, and understanding the radiative processes have been my favorite components of the semester. However, I need to give a shout out to binary and locked systems, because actually observing one during a lab project and the exoplanet challenge was amazing!

Hello Mr Planet!

The most difficult parts of the semester would probably be the portions of the class when quantum mechanics, astrochemistry, and similar topics which became very abstract. Notwithstanding, I enjoyed these portions as much as the rest of the class, understanding these components to be integral in comprehending the way all the processes of astronomy work and the way we are currently able to observe anything at all. Without a doubt, this semester became easier than the last one had been, in part I am sure because of just being here longer and knowing what pace needed to be kept, but also because I’ve started to feel more comfortable, more at home in this occasional frozen-over hell, but truly hopeful of the next stages of college life, and learning more and more about this strange and beautiful universe we inhabit.