Cosmic Beginnings

 Close by where I left off yesterday is a display on the Moon, our nearest neighbour. I was putting these posts together on the day Artemis II launched her mission to the Moon.

This Moon rock was brought back as part of the Apollo missions and now resides here.

Earth basalt has a lot in common with lunar basalt, which makes up much of the dark areas we see when we look up at the Moon.

The long process of the Earth coming into being started long ago, with the Big Bang.

Meteorites still hit the planet from time to time. Their physical make up gives science clues not just to what's out there, but to how our planet works.

This large meteorite comes from Canyon Diablo in the United States, having had struck the planet 50 000 years ago.

In living memory for many Canadians was the Buzzard Coulee meteorite. It lit up the skies of the Canadian west in 2003, breaking apart. This is one of many pieces from it.

Much further back in history, 1.85 billion years ago, a ten kilometre wide meteorite struck the earth at what is now Sudbury, Ontario. It left a mineral wealth deep in the earth that the region is still known for, and a crater with a diameter of 130 kilometers.

In Constant Change

 Another perspective of Gaia and the Moon from within the Museum of Nature.

Into the next gallery I went. The Earth Gallery examines the beginnings of our world, its geological makeup, and its place in the universe. We first see display cases with the three types of rock found on the planet. This is sedimentary.

Metamorphic rock is an earlier rock that has been transformed by heat and pressure into a new kind of rock.

And this is magmatic rock.

A video display shows some of the variety of landscapes of the world.

The Shadow Of The Moon

 More today from this section on the islands of Qikiqtait.

A large video screen features footage that speaks to the stark beauty of these islands.

Another video screen features rotating photos from the North.

Out I went, pausing to photograph Gaia below.

And then out into the Queens Lantern to photograph the Moon. Both are the work of the same artist, Luke Jerram.

I looked to the north. The road leading away from here ends at Parliament Hill.

Two more shots of Gaia as she rotates. We'll continue here tomorrow.

Lost Into The Mists Of Time

 This topographical map of the Arctic includes the Arctic circle, as well as lines denoting the tree line, permafrost, and average distribution of sea ice.

Indigenous peoples of the Arctic are beyond those in North America- northern Europe and Russia have distinctive indigenous peoples.

This display case includes items of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, a scientific venture that spent some years in the first quarter of the 20th century exploring the Arctic.

While this display case includes remnants of an earlier expedition. Captain John Franklin took two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, in search of the Northwest Passage in the 1840s and disappeared into the mists of time. A handful of graves were found along with artifacts like this, but most of the expedition disappeared. The ships themselves were only found in recent years in shallow Arctic waters.

A section of the Arctic Gallery is given over to a rotating series on people and places in the North. At present, that is on Qikiqtait. Also known as the Belcher Islands, this is an archipelago in the vastness of Hudson Bay. Inuit people live off the land in this place, and the display area looks at their way of life and culture. As I was passing through this area, a woman was with her daughter, pointing at a specific house in a large photo of a village, and saying that was where she had grown up. 

The common eider is an essential part of life for these people- the down from their feathers is very, very warm.