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In Baltimore, we have eyes on bigger things | READER COMMENTARY

For The Baltimore Sun
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This image released by NASA last year shows the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Since the telescope’s launch in 2021, the Space Telescope Science Institute at the Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus has been its earthly home base. File. (Associated Press)

This image released by NASA last year shows the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Since the telescope’s launch in 2021, the Space Telescope Science Institute at the Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus has been its earthly home base. File. (Associated Press) (Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach/NASA via AP)

When The Baltimore Sun had its worldwide network of overseas bureaus, it helped make Baltimoreans feel bigger than themselves. We were citizens at the center of a larger world — just as did freighters in the port and immigrants arriving from all around the globe.

Now in a first year celebration of the Webb Space Telescope, we learn its revolutionary images and data from a million miles away in space come back to earth through antennas in California, Madrid and Canberra, Australia, to be sent and analyzed on San Martin Drive near the Johns Hopkins University campus (“Year’s worth of James Webb Space Telescope observations discussed at Baltimore conference: ‘A beacon of human achievement,’” Sept. 13).

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Baltimoreans can again feel bigger than ourselves. We are now citizens at the center of a larger universe.

It may seem corny to bring all this up amid daily concerns about street crime, climate change, egg prices and the Orioles lease. But what has brought this city, and all other human settlements in history, to glory is when our dreams extend beyond present hopes and fears.

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Eyes in the skies, Baltimore!

— Stan Heuisler, Baltimore

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