I attended Gregory Sloan’s cafe chat regarding religion and planetary models/the solar system. And while this was all very interesting to me, as I am a huge fan of the sky and exploring what’s out there, the most fascinating this to me was the planetary orbitals. I have not taken a science class that covers the solar system since about 7th grade. Therefore, learning more about the orbitals and what thinkers such as Copernicus believed and discovered was incredibly fascinating to me. For example, the graphics that Sloan shared with us which he called simple I found to be incredibly interesting. Specifically, I don’t think I ever knew that the reason that the planets look like they are tracing back in the sky over the course of a year is because of our perspective on earth. I did know that all the planets orbited but I truly never made the connection between how different orbiting planets interacting and how that would shape our perspective on earth.

Thus, this simple, yet to me very complex idea, really taught me something I never considered before. Next time I look up, I will definitely be considering our perspective and how where we are on the moving earth and where the planets are in their orbitals is shaping our viewpoint.