The Tattoo

I had a cup of coffee and a couple of hours of conversation with an astronomer friend of mine, whose name will not be mentioned.  When we were leaving Starbucks, she said: "Oh, I got a tattoo!"  And with that she pulled up her shirtsleeve and showed me this, which I recognized, but which I was not sure of what it meant.  The brilliant Astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake designed the Pulsar map, working with fellow astronomer Carl Sagan and artist and writer Linda Salzman Sagan. The starburst-like diagram is called a pulsar map, because it shows the location of our sun relative to known pulsars.  Pulsars are the rapidly spinning remains of dying stars—the leftover cores of supernova explosions. They're only about 12 to 15 miles in diameter, but most contain more than twice the mass of our sun. Their rapid spin and intense magnetic fields cause the pulsars to emit narrow beams of light, which flash like the beam from a lighthouse every time they pass across our field of view.  Each pulsar has its own signature pulse rate, making them easy to identify, and ideal as reference points on a map.  This map would show people from an intelligent civilization where Voyager came from.  This map is etched into a golden record which is part of the Voyager spacecraft.  If intelligent beings find Voyager, they’d be able to triangulate our sun’s location and plot a course to our little corner of the Milky Way.  Now THAT is a cool tattoo!