In a recent blog post, I referenced the Frostbite 5K, a race I’ll be running in less than two weeks. Yesterday, after a training run, I was stretching my old body out and asked my son, Henry, to take a picture of me.

I just so happened to be stretching close to a picture of me playing golf when I was 3 or 4 years old. I was playing with a “golf club” fashioned out of scrap wood by my father — same person who took the photo. The scrap wood was from the house my parents built (my dad did the framing, plumbing, wiring, etc.) and I grew up in. My dad died back in 2020 — today would have been his 83rd birthday.
When I teach astronomy, I often tell my students that I am going to die soon. I don’t have a terminal illness, nor do I live a particularly dangerous lifestyle. But astronomy deals with huge stretches of time that dwarf human life spans.
I consider the Sun to be a kindred spirit — middle-aged and average . . . just like me. The Sun is a star, but not an overly impressive star. It’s been fusing hydrogen into helium for about 5 billion years and has enough hydrogen to continue the process for another 5 billion years or so. At that point, it will “retire” from being a star and will wind up as a remnant known as a “white dwarf.” Check out this video to learn about the life cycles of stars of various masses. If you watch until the end, you’ll see a music video that features some stellar dance moves by two of my suns sons.