Blogs

ATLAS (2) - The Celestial Police 

By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

.

.

Today we all admire 

NASA's ATLAS survey 

for discovering numerous asteroids. 

But it had an ancestor in the 1800s, 

the Celestial Police, 

with a few astronomers 

(Schroter, von Zach, Olbers, Harding etc.) 

and their observatories, 

who discovered the asteroids 

2 Pallas, 3 Juno and 4 Vesta. 

.

I can imagine a conversation 

from those times. 

.

Asteroid: “Please don't arrest me!” 

Celestial Police: “Don't worry, 

we are not arresting you physically, 

but only morally 

for the consciousness of humanity.”