Celestial Cheese

Choosing a name for this blog seemed to be an unnecessarily difficult task for me.  Given that the topic (astronomy, if that wasn't made clear by the title) is exactly what I'm trying to learn, picking a name that didn't make me look like a complete fool seemed tricky.  When racking my brain got me nowhere, I began to reference books and the interweb.

Hoping to find a good alliterative phrase, I first scanned a list of astronomy terms.  No luck.
Meanwhile, the phrase 'night vision' kept popping into my head.
No.  Absolutely not.

Next, I decided to marry astronomy with my one true love: cheese.  Naturally, I typed "astronomy cheese" into google.  This was almost as disappointing as my search for astronomical alliteration.  I did, however, discover that there is a wine, cheese, and astronomy festival in New Zealand every year.  I also found several terrible cartoons referencing our moon's very cheesy composition.  Oh, and I discovered a triple creme called Moon Dust Cheese.

See?

Note:  This is a Trader Joe's display.  I work for Trader Joe's and I assure you I never saw this cheese.  But, seriously, a triple creme cow's milk rolled in ash?  I would have eaten all of it.  Apparently, this cheese was available on the east coast stores during October.  Bummer.

Most importantly, in this pursuit of cheese and stars, I discovered proof of something I've always believed.  Astronomers have great senses of humor.  Check out this 2006 April Fool's Joke from the people at Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Anyways, back to the naming this blog:

I apparently settled on the name "First Light".  It's not terribly witty, but I think the concept of the first light collected by a telescope is a good parallel to the journey that begins here, with my first astronomy course.