A Backyard Observing Session

Seeing lots through a telescope

As suddenly as they started, they stopped. Silence returned, cool over the mountain like the night, broken only by a distant car rolling south, and the whir of the telescope motor on the long watch.

The snow-crete is relenting a bit. That’s the first time I heard the coyotes since the storm. They yowled and yipped and howled and then fell off, somewhere beyond the east treeline.

I looked back into the eyepiece, and back through time. The celestial dogs are out, too, the Big one and the Little one. As the moon wanes, the glitter of the winter Milky Way returns, and I start to prowl again, east of Orion. And south.

Oh, the starfields, diamonds in the frigid deep, inviting the eye to linger as long as the body can stand the chill. This is a mysterious sky, something that rational people eschew in favor of the fireside.

But I’ve only been accused of being rational exactly twice, and an engineer once. All three times I laughed and said thank you.

These dewed webs of jewels spun across winter meadows will catch you, put you in a trance, mesmerized by the frozen patterns suspended in the black, that’s not black like the sea is not green, but the color of Deep, spangled with flecks of stars almost seen, and those shapes are there forever, as far as we’re concerned, and they’re still there.

Another car rolled south on the distant highway, and the breeze crept in without a sound, and the telescope motor whirred softly, keeping pace with the dance of the spheres.

I don’t know why exactly I look deep into the night. But I do, and if I could but put what I see in a bottle and send it to you as a present, I would.

Still, maybe it’s better that I can’t. Some things aren’t meant to be bottled, commodified.

I’ll spend hours reading and discussing the best kind of telescopes, as if a pair of skis could understand cold, or a frying pan how much fried eggs mean on a crisp morning. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. After all, if I focus on the art of shipbuilding, I’ll forget the mighty billowing depths, and maybe I won’t consider drowning.

But even after I discuss the best types of mirrors and superior glass which which to traverse Infinity, I make the “mistake” of looking.

Then I can’t forget that I’m spinning on a mote in a sea of endless nothing, where I could (and am) fall forever into that color that’s not black and not green, but like the sea, is deep and star strewn, and…and it’s beautiful.

The moon rose late, illuminating one long cloud above it, and shone with that mysterious waning light on the snow.

–Josh

Messier 46 and 47, marveled at last night.