The night has always held infinite mysteries, full of not only wonder but fear of what was hiding in the dark and ancient man has prayed to the deities simply to insure that day would come again. The night is equated with evil, it is when demons, witches, werewolves and vampires thrive. It is also infinitely beautiful and full of mystery. Living in modern times it is easy to lose touch with the night as our forebears knew it. A vastness full of stars and planets with no logical explanation, for which fire was the only weapon to keep its minions at bay. Eventually they found shapes in the stars and named them only to build monuments to them to make calendars, they used them for divination, and to help explorers as they traveled the endless oceans looking for the point where their ships would fall into the nameless void, "here there be monsters." Cities have diluted this power as it has so many other goblins that stalked our ancestors and last night I was given a taste of that intrinsic human wonder.
There is an amateur astronomy club that meets maybe once a month and they get together and bring their telescopes and let people look through them. Braving the cold a few of us drove out of the city about 20 minutes to partake of the stargazing festivities. With all the talk of inches and size of telescope (almost of game of my telescope is bigger than yours), our small group was reduced to making penis jokes that had us all cracking up. Juvenile I know but fun just the same. Is that a really big pair of binoculars in your pants or you just happy to see me? In the end, what I saw was amazing. The moon was only half full but extremely bright. Many of the scopes were erect and pointing at that heavenly body (see, its just too easy). I saw these amazing craters and mountain ranges and swirls of patterns. I've never seen the moon that close except in pictures, it was amazingly beautiful. Also, unlike in most years, this is Jupiter's time to shine and I saw this massive planet and three of her moons. I was actually able to make out the lines on her surface and the famous red spot. It was brilliant. For sheer excitement there was nothing like seeing the international space station go zipping by so fast that the man who loaned me his huge binoculars to see it said that if I missed it, just wait an hour as it would be back. I find it hard to believe that this construct can circle the globe in an hour and it takes 6 to get to Florida from here. I was able to get a good view though. Lastly, but certainly not least, was the nice gentleman who I talked to about the milky way. He generously agreed to find another galaxy for us to view as the aforementioned one was shy this evening. And that is when I got my first look at Andromeda, the picture at the top of this post. It wasn't as clear but it just took my breath away. It is things like this that remind me that we do live in a world of wonder. There is no way that we are alone in this universe. That there must be ones just teeming with life and we are stuck here in the backwoods screaming into the void about how important we are, that we are the center upon which everything else radiates from. How puny and insignificant we really are. You would think that our planet's loneliness would bring us together instead of driving us apart. We are children trying to raise ourselves with no direction or guidance, so we are a planet of wild hooligans who have disintegrated into Lord of the Flies barbarity, the strong prey on the weak and call it good. Oh well, enough of this meandering. This was a wonderful experience and highly recommended as an activity if you can find it in your area. My mother lives on a place where the sky is blanketed by stars on clear nights. You can just take a blanket, lie back and get lost. It would add a whole other dimension with a telescope and in this equation, size really does matter.
And now for something completely different:
I found this amazing blog that is posting George Orwell's diary entries to the day. He was really prescient and not just with his fiction. Check it out http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/
And in relation to the Occupy movement and Orwell I found this chilling article written over a year ago. Some things have changed since then and some things have stayed the same. Regardless, it is worth a read and don't forget to read the comments as well. Some of the people are so intelligent that their responses add layers of meaning to the original piece. Unlike comments on news article, these authors are educated, erudite, and use proper spelling and grammar. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/27-1
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