Tour of the Impossible Universe Stop 2: Barnard's Loop
I could have called this one the "Orion Molecular Cloud Complex"...
I wrote this in the liner notes for this track:
“I’ve been staring up at the constellation Orion…for decades. And in all that time I didn’t know there was another huge nebula in and around its stars.”
Orion is one of my favorites, because outside of the five constellations around the North Star, this is one that I have my earliest recollections of recognizing and really studying and analyzing, which is why I was so surprised to find this huge nebula around it.
I was a member of the Boy Scouts of America back in the day, and one of the merit badges that I really wanted to get was the Astronomy merit badge. When I was in 8th Grade, I remember my parents taking me to meet with the merit badge counselor, who also happened to be my science teacher.
On that cold, clear February night, Mr. Lambson and I stood out in the parking lot of my junior high school while I fulfilled the requirement of identifying several constellations, one of which was Orion.
I don’t know about you, but whenever I look at pictures of nebula, I get this impression of just free-floating in space, with the nebula filling up the expanse of my vision. For this track I imagined I was sitting in Milliway’s1, with the Loop’s expanse filling the windows and transparent ceiling. I wanted to capture that sense in this track, but also make it have just a bit of lounge-y energy to it.
For the break though, I felt like a bit of mystery and a bit more energy could take you into some of the other cosmic objects in the Loop’s vicinity, because there are so many!
I released this track as the second single for Impossible Universe, and as a single, it got a music video. If you haven’t seen the video, well, here it is:
In the video I wanted to take that idea from the track’s break, and take viewers on a tour of the Loop and many of its companion phenomena, like:
And these two, while not making it into the video tour, are nevertheless, quite spectacular in and of themselves:
If you know, you know. If you don’t, watch this video Restaurant at the End of the Universe.