How often have we said in recent weeks that we are experiencing once in a lifetime events, or being a part of the process of writing history? Just as we have witnessed the whole experience of the Queens platinum jubilee, something never seen in history before and the proclamation of a new king, this week another event has been written in the history books. This picture might just look like four blurred dots, but what you are looking at here is an amateur photograph taken by my son in law on Tuesday 27th September 2022 of Jupiter and it’s four moons as seen from the front garden of our manse. The picture was not taken with some specialist equipment, but with a standard bridge camera with a zoom lens, by a man who enjoys taking pictures, but has had no formal training and I think that what we are looking at here is something awe inspiring. When we saw the map on the news earlier in the day, we noticed that Ipswich fell right on the perimeter line, so we weren’t sure whether Jupiter would be visible or not, my guess was that we wouldn’t see anything, so I went to bed.
The statement that this is a once in a lifetime event isn’t exactly true for me, I was almost five the last time that this happened, and my guess is that I was far more interested in my toy cars than planets back then, in fact, I was possibly oblivious to the mere existence of the solar system. According to Google, the next occurrence of this phenomenon in expected to happen in 2129, and no matter how optimistic my chances are of longevity I believe that there is little chance of me surviving until I am one hundred and seventy-one, so I believe that it is safe to say that I won’t get another chance to experience this. I guess that the ways things would have worked in 1963 would have been that my dad would have read a story from the Yorkshire Evening Post a day or so after the event and there might have been a photograph with less clarity than the one my son in law took as evidence after the event, there is no way that my parents would have had the equipment to photograph the planet a staggering three hundred and sixty-five million miles away from earth. My mind struggles to even comprehend what a thousand miles looks like, let alone a million, so a distance like this is way outside the scope of my imagination. Admittedly my son in laws camera has a powerful zoom lens, but the sheer scope of this is quite incredible.
Back in 1963 my dad had a Zeiss Icon camera, it was one of those cameras that unfolded with bellows at the front, and a simple little fold out view finder, which was nothing more than two plates of metal, he could adjust the aperture and the timing, but little else, so attempting something of this magnitude would have been a fruitless exercise. My dad quite fancied himself as a bit of a photographer and whenever we went out as a family, he would carefully position the camera on a wall, set the timer and run to be a part of the family picture. Back in those days, we had to wait until the film was full, then we would take it to the chemists in the village and wait for around a week for the pictures to be developed and printed and eagerly look forward to witnessing the fruits of our labours. I can remember having a collection of pictures of my dad just arriving to take his place in the picture, we didn’t have many photographs of all four of us sitting comfortably and smiling. The picture above is a frame from a short video and my old dads mind would boggle at what is possible today.
The gospel stories in the New Testament section of the bible are made up of a collection of stories a group of people remembered about the life and times of an extraordinary man. This was a once in a lifetime event and I am glad that they took time to tell the story of their experiences so that future generations might know. Later, people took time to commit the stories to paper to contribute to the Bible as we know it today. There is nothing wrong with getting excited about the different experiences we have in life, telling others what we have heard, or seen, or done and even committing our thoughts to paper. Life is exciting, our story is unique, please keep sharing your once in a lifetime experiences.