Astronomy was my first love.
Long before I became an historian, I was a stargazer. On a clear night, I would gaze into the sky and attempt to identify as many constellations in the northern hemisphere as I could. Nowadays, sadly, there is so much light pollution in Aurora, and elsewhere, that stargazing requires long trips into the countryside, and even that is not a guarantee of success.
Over the years, I have made several interesting sightings. I have spotted the planets Venus and Jupiter many times; they are easy to spot because, after the Sun and the Moon, they are the brightest objects in the sky. Venus, the so-called morning star, can be found just before sunrise above the horizon in the east; Jupiter can be found just before sunrise in the southeast about three fingers above the horizon.
Many years ago, while celebrating the Fourth of July with relatives in Sandwich, my uncle-in-law asked me if I’d like to look through his small telescope. Would I? You bet! He aimed the scope at a particular part of the sky, and I saw Saturn with its rings. What a blast!
I have seen dozens of meteorites, including a spectacular one which lighted up the sky for a whole second before burning out. And I have spotted the comet Kohotek (albeit with peripheral vision) when it paid Earth a visit in 1977.
By far the grandest sights I have witnessed were two when I was visiting my sister in central Oregon. The first was in 1982 when she was living with her second husband along a country road in the eastern foothills of the Cascade Mountains. I stayed there overnight due to the long traveling time from my parents’ home in Springfield, Ore.. After supper, I wandered outside, looked up into the night sky, and saw the clearest view I ever have seen of the main body of the Milky Way galaxy. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it!
My then brother-in-law asked me if I’d like to look at it with his small telescope. Would I? You bet! Thus, I spotted individual stars glittering through the Earth’s atmosphere; they appeared as diamond dust, and that’s how I described them to my sister. I told her that she was looking far back into history, because the light from those stars had taken hundreds and thousands and millions of years to reach Earth and they now were physically in other parts of the galaxy, if they still existed at all.
The second grand sight occurred just last month when I was in the little village of Fossil, Ore., in the north-central part of the State. My sister, now widowed from her third husband, and I were sitting on the front porch of her house enjoying the peace and quiet. The Moon was up and so was Jupiter. She retrieved our father’s binoculars in order to get a better view. I spotted a smaller, reddish body slightly southwest of Jupiter; upon consulting a star chart for August, which I thoughtfully had brought with me, I identified that body as the red giant star, Antares. Another coup for The Chas!
I have asked myself the two questions always associated with star-gazing. To wit: What’s out there, and who’s out there? I have imagined that there are other beings, not unlike myself, on other worlds gazing up into their night skies and asking themselves the same questions. I am reminded of the science-fiction novel penned by the late astronomer, Carl Sagan, entitled Contact. The central character (an astronomer!) in answer to the second questions, said “If there isn’t [anyone else out there], it’s an awful waste of space.” My take is that the laws of probability dictate the existence of many of intelligent beings in our galaxy alone, and there are a lot of galaxies, and that it’s only a matter of time before: Contact!
I cannot hope to witness that event in my lifetime, more’s the pity. We’re a long way from developing a warp drive or discovering wormholes in space. On the other hand, maybe the ETs have, which automatically brings up the whole UFO business. When they do make contact, the human reaction will be immediate and varied. I won’t speculate on that because it requires a separate essay of its own.
You should know, however, that we are “star stuff,” as Dr. Sagan once declared on his seminal TV series, Cosmos. Every atom in our bodies was created by the birth and growth of our Sun which was itself created by the deaths of countless other stars and, through additional evolutionary processes, Life as we know it on Earth in all of its various forms appeared. Keep that in mind, dear reader, the next time you look into the night sky.
Just a thought.