Carolyn Porco Quotes

You know, there was a time, just before I started to study physical science, when astronomers thought that systems such as we have here in the solar system required a rare triple collision of stars.

The principal reason for the universe's poker face is that its constituents are far away. Stars careen through space, and galaxies spin at speeds thousands of times faster than a jet plane. But given their distance, you'd need the patience of Job to notice much change in their appearance or position.

From the moment of using rocket devices, a great new era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.

My interest in astronomy grew from the play 'Space' that I did, where I had to learn where my character was from. I had to study the stars and figure where everything was and how I got here and all of those things.

I study orbital dynamics as a hobby. My idea of a good time is sitting down and drawing on that knowledge to imagine a space mission from beginning to end, getting as many details right as I can.

We do have, and will continue to have an unquenchable curiosity to understand our Solar System.

All of the stars rotate, have orbits around the center of the galaxy, and most of them go around the center of the galaxy in nearly circular orbits. They vary a little bit from circular, but they're predominantly circular.

The origin of galaxies is one of the fundamental questions of astronomy, and that's what I've been studying.

We don't use Hubble to stare at Jupiter unless there's a special event or some special reason.

Why would you listen to an astronomer about a planet?

The universe has told us the most common types of planets are small planets, and our study shows these are exactly the ones that are most likely to be orbiting Alpha Centauri A and B.

There are amateurs who have seen that one of Uranus' poles is brighter than the other, or who have seen cloud formations on the planet. For all we know, interesting things are happening there all the time.

Astronomy is written for astronomers

Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture.

Astronomy is ... the only progressive Science which the ancient world produced.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun.

The movement of comets is part of the ordinary works of nature which, without regard to the happiness or misery of mankind, are transported from one part of the heavens to another by virtue of the general laws of motion.

And the earth self-balanced on her centre hung.

As, pricked out with less and greater lights, between the poles of the universe, the Milky Way so gleameth white as to set very sages questioning.

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

I am watching the stars, admiring their complex trajectories through space and time. I am trying to give a name to the force that set them in motion.

If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same density.

It turns out that the history of astrophysics is where we perfected time keeping.

What's the orbital velocity of the moon?

Newton did not know what happened to the apple, and I can prove this when the next eclipse comes.