Svengoolie is airing "The Invisible Ray" tonight. I usually like sci-fi and I like old movies but putting the two together is problematic. Svengoolie said the movie was made in 1936. However, I thought I heard Boris Karloff say he was looking at the Andromeda nebula but later he calls it "an island universe". Andromeda was originally called "Messier object 31" and thought to be a nebula. Messier numbered these "fuzzy patches" in the sky so he wouldn't be confusing them w/ comets. (It being the 'in' thing to find comets at that time.) Edwin Hubble figured out by the mid 1920's that Andromeda was actually another galaxy or "island universe" as he called them. Boris than relates that Andromeda is three quarters of a million light years away. Well, that's a forgivable error. Andromeda is more like 2.5 million light years away but distances have been recalculated many times since then. Anyway, watching the movie is all very unsettling but hopefully I'll be asleep before the next astronomical inaccuracy.
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