âThis is Jupiter, Mrs. Ye,â Mark who was the professor on duty said.
He Xiyan took a deep breath.
She had to admit that she was impressed. She had studied geography and she had also seen pictures of the eight planets in the solar system online but this was the first time she saw a planet through a telescope.
She could even see Jupiter slowly spinning and see the clouds that surrounded it moving and as well as the Great Red Spot.
âWow! I canât believe Jupiter looks like that. It doesnât look anything like the pictures Iâve seen online,â she exclaimed. She was astonished and awestruck by the grandeur of the planet.
Ye Hao stood beside He Xiyan. Just as he had expected, she looked as excited and as happy as when he had first visited. He didnât manage to see Jupiter when he had visited the previous time because the telescope wasnât pointed in the direction of Jupiter.
âHow big is Jupiter?â He Xiyan had forgotten the knowledge she had learned in school. She only knew that Jupiter was the largest planet in the solar system.
âJupiter is 2.5 times heavier than any other planet in the solar system and it is 318 times heavier than Earth. It has a surface area that is 1321 times that of Earthâs and its diameter is 10% of the sunâs diameter,â Ye Hao said with a tiny smile.
He would bring her anywhere as long as it made her happy.
He Xiyan turned to look at him and said, âIâm surprised youâve committed these facts to memory.â
He Xiyan didnât know that Ye Hao was so interested in astronomy.
The observatory was equipped with the most advanced telescopes, including radio telescopes and space telescopes that could be used to see planets that were more than 10 billion light-years away.
He Xiyan noticed a beautiful cloud formation on the screen next to her. It was colorful and seemed to be a dreamy cross between deep blue and red. She also spotted white, yellow and blue dots in the cloud formation and guessed that they were probably stars.
She stared at this scene in wide-eyed wonder.
âWhere is that?â He Xiyan asked Professor Mark.
This was simply amazing. She couldnât believe how beautiful the vast universe could be.
âThis is the Trifid Nebula. It is located in Sagittarius and is the closest to the galaxyâs center. It is probably 5,000 light-years away from Earth.â
â5,000 light-years?â He Xiyan repeated dumbly as she stared at the beautiful scene in front of her.
She couldnât fathom what 5,000 light-years away was like. She knew that it took 8 minutes for the sunâs rays to reach the Earth, so she wondered what it was like to be 5,000 light-years awayâ¦â
âThis nebula is made up of an open cluster of stars, which are made up of hundreds or thousands of stars that are loosely connected. The energetic light from these stars strikes hydrogen atoms in the surrounding nebula causing them to lose their electrons. When an electron finds its way back to a hydrogen proton, it emits lights of beautiful colors. This is what produces this beautiful sight that can only be seen in space,â Mark said. He spoke in Chinese because he had lived in China for a long time. However, he used such professional jargon that He Xiyan didnât really understand him.
She only knew that there was a beautiful nebula on the screen and that those lighted dots were stars. There were so many stars.
âAre these stars born in the nebula?â she asked like a curious child. She enjoyed looking at stars when she was a child and enjoyed thinking about interesting topics as she looked at the stars in the sky.