The Perfect Summer Night

We live finite lives. There are limits to everything. There will only ever be but a few nights in any given lifetime when the summer weather is perfect to view the sky from a high point on a moonless night. The absolute silent arc of the Milky Way is more beautiful than anything you can imagine. The prairie offers silence - not often, especially in the summer - but tonight is one of those times. The only sound is the quiet stirring of the grass in the gentle wind.

I sat in the car, no longer nimble enough to crawl onto the roof to lay down for an unimpeded view of the stars. The light pollution from Topeka increases every year as the entire city expands west. Mercury lights now scar the horizon, marking new homes in the neighborhood. My aging eyes can no longer see the night sky in sharp detail but I remember what it looks like through young eyes.

From long habit, I imagined the view, the very spot, as it would have looked when the Kansa were the only people here. No one now can imagine how bright the stars would have appeared. If a Kansa woman had ventured away from camp to ponder the magnificent array of stars in solitude she surely would have felt the same wonder.

The First People understood the stars, perhaps not an understanding that would translate into our current science but they would have known the fundamental truth of stars. There was no Church, no Dark Ages for the First People. They were free human beings, living wholly within the grace of nature. And just as the universe draws near to me in the silence, it would have drawn near to the prairie woman of long ago.

From the web site: Astronomy Picture of the Day

Realized Dreams

Geese and Human Beings in Flight

Since the first human brain crossed the evolutionary threshold into the capacity to dream of what could be, the dream of flight was paramount. It took us a good long while of dreaming, but once we made the jump, it was an exceedingly fast evolution, from December 17, 1903 to July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface.

My first time off the ground was in a small private plane above Wichita, Kansas. My first commercial flight was from Kansas City to Philadelphia, and we flew through towering white cloud canyons and brilliant sunlight the entire route. It was too enchanting to be frightening even though each change in the angle of the airplane caused something loose within the walls of the plane to rattle from one end of the cabin to another.

We are such an arrogant and difficult species that we take the miraculous accomplishment of routine air travel for granted. To add insult, some of our troublesome brethren have instigated the foolish conspiracy theory that walking on the moon was an elaborate hoax. If western civilization suddenly falls into ruins or gradually declines into obscurity, the human race may indeed forget men first walked on the moon in the twentieth century. Some future historian may uncover bits of the fake moon landing theory and cast the hateful light of doubt forever upon one of mankind's most amazing achievements.

Now in the twenty-first century, America has given up the dream of flying to other worlds, agreeing to hitch rides into space. America has been conquered by the frightened, the small- minded, the angry and the hateful. We have killed our collective shining dream, once given voice by our young President when he said "We choose to go the the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Despite the political vagaries, the rise and fall of fortunes, the ebb and flow of civilization, nature will hold the dream of flight for mankind. As long as it is necessary, wild geese will migrate, making their long seasonal flight high in the cloud canyons. And beneath the night sky, a human being listening for their traveling calls will feel the old evolutionary urge to follow them into the sky.

Meteors

The Lyrids meteor shower peaked tonight between 1 and 3 am. I parked my truck on the hill in the dark and settled in. Within a few moments I was rewarded with a brilliant streak trailing a long showy tail of white sparks. An hour later, I had seen two tiny threads of light zip by. I am certain however, that right this moment as I sit at the computer, the entire sky if full of streaking meteors...

The half moon was high in the west, and the local sky still full of smoke and haze from the burning pastures, and thin clouds covered most of the sky, so visibility was not the best. A solid bank of thunderheads advancing from the west, close enough to fire the sky with lightning occasionally, was also pushing darker clouds into the mix.

It does not matter if I see a thousand meteors or none - any excuse to be out beneath the night sky will do. It is cool enough to need a coat. The air is sweet with the emerald green emerging prairie, and no insects. Close enough to perfect for me.

What's Up?

There was never much exposure to astronomy in my early life, but I could recognize the Big Dipper. At some point in my adult life, I discovered Cassiopeia and Pleiades. It was my daughter who, in middle school, pointed out the largest, most dramatic constellation in the sky: Orion. How could I have missed it?

Over the years I learned Orion rules the sky in the winter months. Right now the mighty hunter is visible in the western sky after sunset. Soon he will be gone from the night sky altogether and I will gladly hail his arrival in the east with the return of cold weather.

The same phenomena that causes the moon to appear enormous rising above the eastern horizon also influences the apparent size of Orion coming up in the dark skies in early winter. It is breathtaking to witness the silent, steady ascent of Orion's stars on a clear night over an unobstructed horizon.

The names of Orion's stars are wonderful and mysterious: Betelgeuse, Rigel, Saiph and Bellatrix. The three blue beauties that make up Orion's belt: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka almost sound like Indian words. To be sure, there are many Indian names for Orion, but I do not know any of them.

The Orion nebula is so vast and brightly lit that it can be seen with the naked eye - but not my naked eyes any longer, sadly.

One of the most wonderful gifts I ever received in my entire life was a small telescope with excellent optics. It was a Christmas present from my son's father, the only one I ever received from him. After I the absolute surprise of such a wonderful gift, the skies promptly clouded up for a week.  There was nothing to see as I anxiously awaited clearing weather. Some "star" had been blazing brightly for weeks, visible even in the light pollution of the city, and stubbornly visible from my southern bedroom window in the tiny space between our home and the neighbors. I loved looking at it each night from the warmth of my bed after I turned the lights out. As soon as I could set up the scope beneath a clear sky, I searched for that brilliant jewel.

At first look, I was greatly disappointed with the quality of the telescope. Even in the best of telescopes, stars are merely pinpoints of light, but I did not know that. Standing in the freezing cold, the bright "star" I had watched from my bed was fuzzy and oblong after I finally got it in my sights. I did not want to tell my significant other that he had given me a piece of expensive junk. As I continued to zero in on the star, I accidentally turned the knobs just enough to bring it into perfect focus. I involuntarily gasped - it was Saturn and the rings were clearly visible. It was the first time I had ever seen the rings of Saturn with my own eyes. It was thrilling.

Also in the night sky at that time was Jupiter, and four of its moons were visible as well. I later learned that Galileo made all of his discoveries with a similarly sized telescope. The intense dedication he possessed to verify the knowledge with his diligent observation using the tiny telescope suddenly had a new meaning for me. He had never seen photos of the planets before, no human eyes had ever seen the other planets. To witness the moons of Jupiter must have fired his passion and imagination beyond belief. The rings of Saturn confused him, at least at first. His determined observations proved that we circled the sun. He knew it was true.

With my new telescope, I spent hours observing the moon that winter. As I patiently stood in the frigid weather, clumsily learning to simultaneously turn the knobs of the horizontal and vertical axis in perfect concert to keep the rapidly moving moon in sight, I did not notice the deep cold. As I gained skill in using the telescope, I spent long periods gazing at the stark and beautiful landscape of the moon. At one point, I was so engrossed in my explorations that the bone chilling cold seemed to be an effect of the silent, sere lunarscape. As I suddenly realized how deeply cold I was, an enormous loneliness washed over me, as if I had been standing on the moon, far from home and the warmth of the earth.

Now we take astronomical knowledge for granted. Almost anyone in America can afford a telescope with fine enough optics to see the rings of Saturn, the faintly banded Jupiter and at least four of its moons, as well as the crescent phases of Venus, and the reddish hue of Mars. Galileo spent the last ten years of his life, blind, ill and under house arrest by decree of a papal trial. The truth he found through a telescope so threatened the Church that he was silenced and jailed.

For more truth and beauty, check here every day, the Astronomy Picture of the Day It is a site published by NASA and safe to visit. When you are marveling over the fantastic sights, you might think of Galileo and send him a little "thank you" thought for being such a brave man!