Christian J Cherres @christianslaboratory - Tumblr Blog

Next he will swallow that sword. Aw miss.

“I didn’t have strength to gasp.

Dominating that whole side of the sky was a great whirlpool of millions, maybe billions, of stars.

You’ve seen pictures of the Great Nebula in Andromeda?-a giant spiral of two curving arms, seen at an angle. Of all the lovely things in the sky it is the most beautiful. This was like that.

Only we weren’t seeing a photograph nor even by telescope; we were so close (if “close” is the word) that it stretched across the sky twice as long as the Big Dipper as seen from home-so close that I saw the thickening at the center, two great branches coiling around and overtaking each other.

We saw it from an angle so that it appeared elliptical, just as M31 in Andromeda does; you could feel its depth, you could see its shape.

Then I knew I was a long way from home. That was home, up there, lost in billions of crowded stars.

It was some time before I noticed another double spiral on my right, almost as wide-flung but rather lopsided and not nearly as brilliant-a pale ghost of our own gorgeous Galaxy. It slowly penetrated that this second one must be the Greater Magellanic Cloud-if we were in the Lesser and if that fiery whirlpool was our own Galaxy. […]

I looked again at our blazing spiral and was homesick in a way I hadn’t been since I was six.” -From Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Robert A Heinlein. So far what my half sleeve might end up looking like, getting “sketches” together for when i sit with the artist. The more i work on this the more personal it becomes.