``To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.  I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me.  But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars...One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime.''

Welcome to the William and Mary Physics 176 home page and jump point! Please contact Gene Tracy via e-mail at tracy@physics.wm.edu if you experience any problems or find any broken links.

The figure to the right is a 1998 image from the Hubble Space Telescope.  It required a very long exposure (10 days) and was taken in a small `empty' patch of the southern sky.  To the naked eye, the patch is no bigger than the eye on a Roosevelt dime held at arm's length.  This image reveals faint galaxies never before seen, some of which are almost 10 billion years old.  For more information on this image, click here.