Stargazing

“It is nightfall; the clouds have vanished,
The sky is clear, pure, and cold…
Silently I watch the River of Stars…
Tonight I must enjoy life to the full,
For if I do not, next month, next year,
Who can know where I shall be?”
– Su T’ung-Po

A layer of fresh snow blankets the northern prairie, thin enough for the tops of golden wheat stubble to poke through, while a blast of arctic air from the northwest sweeps the darkening sky clean. Driving south on a secondary highway, an hour east of the city, I turn onto a back road and pull over by the side in complete darkness save for the lights of a farmhouse half a mile away. Emerging into the cold, I exhale a frosty breath and gaze upward into a bowl of black sky full of crackling stars. To the west I see Pegasus plunging towards the horizon with Andromeda in tow. The Big Dipper lies low in the north, its handle grazing the flat landscape and bowl pointed to the upper right. But the best view tonight lies overhead along the pale arc of the northern Milky Way through the bright constellations Perseus and Auriga, and down to the east skirting Orion’s eastern shoulder, passing the feet of the twins of Gemini, and into Canis Major, the Big Dog, with Sirius hovering over a snow-covered spruce tree like a Christmas star. As my eyes grow adapted to the dark, the outlines of our home galaxy begin to emerge. I grab my little telescope from the back of the car, set it securely on its mount, and get to work [Read more…] about The Winter Milky Way

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Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great and good American poet, essayist, and humanist Walt Whitman. Sometimes called the ‘father of free verse’, Whitman was often beheld as the key to understanding America as it was in the promising days of late 19th century, after the Civil War. He was also, in my view, the poet laureate of stargazers everywhere, especially on account of two of his poems ‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer’ and ‘A Clear Midnight’, reproduced below for your reading pleasure.

“A Clear Midnight”
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes
thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Or enjoy the latter poem in the video format below (which is likely the only time you will ever see a video from ‘Breaking Bad’ on this website):

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