The most significant shift that set in motion the separation of the two lines of thought began in the first century when Ptolemy wrote the very first book on astronomy called the Tetrabiblos. In it, he began to suggest that astronomy should be considered a separate science from astrology. It was quite a revolutionary book because it also was the first scientific document to suggest that the earth was not the center of the universe and that astronomy should be focused strictly on the observation and recording of events in the cosmos. To truly get a feel for the amazing accomplishment that was achieved with the launch of the Hubble telescope, spend some time on Nasa s web site dedicated to the project at hubble.nasa.gov. There are also another site where you can enjoy some stunning pictures from the Hubble at heritage.stsci.edu. It s hard to believe how long the Hubble has been orbiting earth and sending back amazing video and pictures of what it is discovering in space. But for many of us, it was that first time we saw a rain of fire from the sky that we eventually came to know as a meteoroid shower. At the time when you see the first one, it s easy to remember the movie war of the worlds or some other fantastic image of aliens entering our atmosphere in droves to take over the planet. If not for the wonders of radio astronomy, these ideas would remain just ideas but slowly science is catching up with theory. But the brilliance of mathematicians and genius minds like Hawking and Einstein continue to stretch our concepts of space. Now we have the string theory that could revolutionize everything we know about space, time and how the universe relates to itself. That may seem long to us as earth dwellers but in terms of stars and planets, this is a very short life as a space object indeed. Scientists across the globe have put together some pretty impressive probes to learn more about comets to aid our understanding of these visitors from beyond. In 1985, for example, the United States put a probe into the path of the comet Giacobini-Zinner which passed through the comets tail gathering tremendous scientific knowledge about comets. The opening of that show had a familiar phrase that went, Look. Up in the sky. It s a bird. It s a plane. It s Superman! How beloved Superman has become in our culture and the worldwide fascination with extraterrestrials and all things cosmic only emphasizes that there is a deep curiosity in all humans about nature and astronomy, even if many people would not know to call it astronomy.