Clyde Tombaugh Quotes

You see billions and billions of stars and recognize that you know some of those have planets, too, and maybe there's life out there, and this is just one of billions of galaxies... and so it gives you this huge perspective of how far we potentially have to go for real exploration.

The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distance.

Mythology, science and space exploration are subjects that have fascinated me since my early childhood. And they were always connected somehow with the music I write.

The universe is so amazing and so limitless, who wouldn't want to study the universe?

One of the things I do know is we know very little about our universe. Even though we think we know a lot, and we do know a lot more than we used to, we have a lot to learn about our universe.

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.

People want to know about what's going on with what's in the universe, what are particles like, what are the basic rules of nature. It's a lot of curiosity out there.

There are 100 Billion starts in the galaxy. That used to be an astronomical number. It's less than the national deficit. Now we should calm them economical numbers.

It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.

We know very little about the universe. I personally don't believe it's uniform and the same everywhere. That's like saying the earth is flat.

I'm interested in the cosmos. I want to know what's out there and how connected we are.

The natural phenomenon of the universe is so mind-blowing, but you have to know about it. You have to be curious. You've got to find it on your own. If you're lucky, you do.

I dreamt of being an astronomer; I had a series of 'How and Why' books on the planets and the stars. At that stage, there were only 14 galaxies; now there are multiverses, dark matter, the nano-microscopic world of the interior of atomic structure.

I like the planets because they are real places that you can go to and send machines to. Faraway astronomy - galactic astronomy and extra-galactic astronomy - is really cool stuff, but to me, it's about destinations.

I'm not really into sci-fi movies, but I'm into the science of space a lot. I love astronomy and thinking about the nothingness of the everythingness of space.

To help enable the kind of science Hubble is performing makes my life worthwhile.

Space is a laboratory, an experiment in all forms of all things, an infinity of possibilities, properties, and places that cry out for investigation and exploration.

It shouldn't be so difficult to determine what a planet is. When you're watching a science fiction show like 'Star Trek' and they show up at some object in space and turn on the viewfinder, the audience and the people in the show know immediately whether it's a planet or a star or a comet or an asteroid.

Here we were, the only seven humans in space, repairing a telescope whose only purpose is to enrich the minds of people on planet Earth and increase our understanding of the workings of the universe. I can think of no better peaceful use of space for all humankind.

We were looking almost one-tenth of the way to the edge of the universe. We're planning to use the facilities we have to make improvements by another factor of 10... a strain sensitivity that is 10 times smaller. This means looking 10 times further out into the universe.

Every field of astrophysics - whether it's our local neighborhood of planets, nearby stars and their attendant planets, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, out to the edge of the universe - every field has questions that are awaiting the power of Hubble.

There was a time when Pluto - which NASA's New Horizons spacecraft at last explored in 2015, a mission I led - was considered the last planet. We now know there are thousands of other - possibly inhabited - planets.

Scientists normally like to do experiments. You know, they like to mix this with that and see what happens. They like to take this thing and poke it and see how it reacts. In astronomy, we can't do that. The stars, the planets, the galaxies, are so far away that we just look at them, and we have to learn things by looking at them.

There is no limit to what astrophysicists can do. We can be very curious.

No one planet can tell us everything about the universe, but Neptune seems to hold more than its share of information about the formation of our own solar system - as well as the solar systems beyond.