Hello everyone, my name is Will Hollo, and I am pleased to announce that this is the beginning of a wonderful, informative blog that will hopefully teach you a myriad of new things about the jaw-dropping study of the universe around us – astronomy. Although I am no expert on the subject, I hope that by the end of this two-block course, this blog will have taught you some things that you never knew before. During my senior year of high-school, I took a semester long course on astronomy, and in that time I became intrigued with the subject and learned as many things about it as I could.

I am currently undeclared as I really don’t have a great idea of what I want to major in, but I would say it’s likely that I go down some science path, and that very well may include astronomy in some way. Luckily, I have more than enough time to pick what I will major in, so that’s not something I’m too worried about.

Anyways, I am originally from Houston, Texas, so going to school in Colorado is a welcome experience to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love H-town, but I’m ecstatic to see what Colorado has to offer me. Skiing, hiking, rockclimbing, fishing, the cold weather – the list goes on. But let’s just say I am more than ready to call myself a Coloradan. Nothing excites me more than knowing that when I graduate from Colorado College, I will have unlimited options. If I really wanted to, I could jump into my career (whatever that might end up being) right away, but I don’t think I want to do that. I think that when I finish school, I want to see the world and check out absolutely all of my options before I commit myself to my job. However, I need to actually get to that point in my life before I start thinking about it too much.

I hope that this FYE will do a couple of things for me. For one, I want it to help acclimate me to CC’s block plan. It is going to take some getting used to, but once I learn the ins and outs of the block plan I’m sure it’s going to be great for me. Secondly, I want to develop my study habits early on. I want nothing more than to exceed academically at this school, and the only way I can do that is if I work hard from the beginning. Lastly, I want to come out of this class with an exceptional understanding of whatever topics we study. I don’t want to just memorize facts from a page, I want to truly understand what we are studying so I won’t just forget everything the week after the exam.

One topic in astronomy that has always fascinated me is that when you look at stars in the night sky, the light that are you seeing from those stars is actually coming from millions of years ago. It has taken many, many years for the photons of light to physically travel from where they started (the stars) to where they are going (the earth). So many years, in fact, that when we look up during a beautiful star-filled night, we are seeing stars how they were when the universe was in its infancy. A truly star-filled night is somewhat like a time machine – we just look up and somehow we are also looking back in time. Stars are so far away and yet somehow large enough for us to be able see. As a result, they manage to be absolutely perfect models of the concept of the speed of light. How Einstein proved his theory of relativity and how that ties into this discussion is another thing I’m immensely amazed by, but that’s for another time.

Here’s a pretty cool video that some of you guys may like if you do enjoy astronomy. Many of you may have already watched it before, it’s the first episode of the Sagan Series.

Thanks for reading