Connections in Time and Space

Image of NGC7331 (courtesy of Wikipedia)

The spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is 350 million or so light years away, that is the light from all the millions of stars that make up this galaxy has been travelling for 350 million years to reach us.  NGC 7331 can be seen, with a backyard telescope, in the constellation of Pegasus, during the Northern Hemisphere autumn and winter. The galaxy is of a similar type, a barred spiral, and size as our galaxy, the Milky Way

Plant Fossils of the Coal Measures

Calamites (Giant Horsetail)

A - Calamites stem.   B - Calamites - 3d pith core of stem.
C - Neuropteris or similar fern like frond.  D - Annularia (Horsetail leaf whorls).  E - Lepidodendron (Impression of large stem or trunk.  F - Lepidodendron (Leafy shoot)

Lepidodendron (Arborescent Lycopsid)

I collected the photographed fossils over a period of thirty years from a number of colliery waste tips in Derbyshire and Somerset. These colossal plants, some achieving heights up to 50 metres, grew 350million years ago on levees in large tidal deltas. These plants formed the basis of large worldwide coal deposits.

Just think the light our eyes capture, when we look at NGC 7331, set off from alien stars when my fossils were living plants swaying in the warm wind, on a day 150 million years before the first Dinosaur walked on the land.

Fossil plants and fossil light inextricably connected!