Living in a Post-Hubble world

In Winston-Salem last week, Paul set up his telescope so Simon could (for the first time) see the stars & planets in the sky, instead of in his (increasingly large) collection of books and encyclopedias about outer space, which feature the latest and most magnificent photos from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Paul worked hard for a long time to get the telescope set up and pointed in the right direction. You could see Saturn, with its articulated rings!

Simon looks through the telescope and looks back up, kind of confused. "But why isn't it in color?"

He did, however, spend the rest of the week making sure I understood (since I wasn't there) that he saw the real Saturn in the real sky. And the real Mars. And the real Orion Nebula.