This TED Talk features radio astronomer Natasha Hurley Walker, recorded live at TEDx Perth, 2016.

Space, the final frontier.

I first heard these words when I was just six years old,

and I was completely inspired.

I wanted to explore strange new worlds.

I wanted to seek out new life.

I wanted to see everything that the universe had to offer.

And those dreams, those words, they took me on a journey,

a journey of discovery, through school, through university,

to do a PhD, and finally, to become a professional astronomer.

Now, I learned two amazing things, one slightly unfortunate,

when I was doing my PhD,

I learned that the reality was I wouldn't be piloting a starship anytime soon.

But I also learned that the universe is strange, wonderful and vast,

actually too vast to be explored by spaceship. And so I turned my attention to astronomy to using telescopes.

Now, I show you before you an image of the night sky.

You might see it anywhere in the world.

And all of these stars are part of our local galaxy, the Milky Way.

Now, if you were to go to a darker part of the sky,

a nice dark site, perhaps in the desert, you might see the center of our Milky Way galaxy spread out before you, hundreds and billions

of stars. And it's a very beautiful image, it's colorful, and again, this is just a local corner

of our universe. And you can see there's a sort of strange dark dust across it.

...