The concrete driveway was rough and slightly warm, like my grandfather’s flannel shirt, when he would hold me as a little boy. Gazing up, Infinity stared back. Hercules flexed his heroic muscles across the heavens, Arcturus blazed orangish, and fireflies danced high among the boughs of the Norway Spruce.
I lay there on my back, contemplating this majesty, and waiting. There! By Corona Borealis - a quick dart of light, as if the Northern Crown had shed a jewel, gracing us earthly creatures with largess. A Tau Herculid meteor zipped across the sky, so quick, it was not unlike a flare from the multitude of fireflies.
In case you hadn’t heard, there was supposed to be a “new” meteor shower this past Monday evening. Material for this fireworks display had been left for us by a comet about thirty years ago. The way things were lining up, a storm was possible.
It wasn’t a storm.
But it sure was pretty.
I saw 21 meteors, and well, some of the nicest ever. You see, each meteor shower not only has it’s actors (the shooting stars), but also the stage upon which they play.
November’s Leonids are ominous - a stern European opera house fitting for a venue: they streak with a fiery green across a sky that heralds the coming of the Dark. Stars seem faint, the dew heavy, and there’s often mist from the ground. The 2001 storm lit up the fog with green arrows.
December’s Geminids are festive: bold, bright, dancing in the bedazzled part of the winter sky, tinsel among the Christmas ornaments of Castor, Pollux, Procyon, Betelgeuse. (And Jack Frost is certainly nipping at the nose!)
August’s Perseids are…annoying: Sometimes they put on a great show, but this is the one that everybody tries to see. There’s mosquitos, humidity, and often the experience seems like visiting the Lincoln memorial in the same month. “I know this is supposed to be fun, but I’m thirsty, and what are all these people doing here? Have there been any shooting stars yet?” (Ha - perhaps I’m a touch jaded as a DC area native.)
The Tau Herculids were a perfect example of waiting patiently to see the celestial fireworks. I felt I had stumbled across a string quartet in the park.
Most of the time, I was just gazing across light years. The Milky Way slowly rose in the east. The Chuck-Will’s-Widow (a big cousin to the Whip-Poor-Will) chanted off in the pines. The carpenter frogs cackled with their strange call, and a bullfrog thrummed in the humid night.
Zip! One by Hercules.
Wait…! Was that one? No, just a firefly by the spruce.
Zing! A copper colored streak, breaking into a few pieces, lazily cruised towards the Great Bear, one trail of a slow-burning 4th of July firework. “Ooo!”
Antares glowered in the south, a bloody eye, “Rival of Mars.”
And there’s another! Like a stone skipped across the river, this fellow danced across the swath of the Milky Way.
All in all, I saw the Summer sky rising in the east, oodles of stars, the dance of the fireflies, and 21 Tau Herculid meteors.
I guess it pays to look up. Kinda makes me want to do something today to live up to the example of that one meteor as it skipped across the river of starlight.
Don’t you?