Writing and Reading

Looking through the atmosphere is like looking through a piece of old stained glass. The glass has defects that distort the image. The atmosphere too has such distorting effects, but the defects in the atmosphere also move, thus blurring the image as well. The glass is colored, so only some colors get through, and the same is true for the atmosphere. For one thing, astronomers had been eager for decades to put a telescope above the atmosphere.