It seems everyone loves Sherlock Holmes more than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He tried to kill his “commercial” character off, but rumor has it even the King encouraged him to resurrect him after an untimely death in The Final Problem.
My favorite rendition of Mr. Holmes is from the Granada television series, starring Jeremy Brett as the icy detective. Something that strikes me about these stories is the subtlety. The scenery is modest. The 19th century British manners are restrained. Vicious crimes are untangled by attention to the most trivial of details. There’s something appealing in watching the keen observer work his brilliance on clues hiding in plain sight. I see myself in the dumbfounded bystanders. “It was right in front of me?”
“Indeed.”
Another case of art imitating life. If you blink, you’ll miss the chapters in a sigh.
It’s sort of like the springtime sky. The mighty torches of the winter nights sink slowly into the west. Orion heads back home followed by his dogs. The party of the summer Milky Way doesn’t rise till late. Looking perpendicular to the plane of our home galaxy, we see fewer stars to weave our tales of adventure and bravery. Yet there’s beauty in the quiet: Leo the Lion stalks a lonely part of the heavens, and the Bears wheel in the north.
A closer look at the subtlety brings us a myriad of tiny ghosts. Unobscured by the galactic dust of the summer and winter Milky Way views, deep space looms into view, and with it, the Coma-Virgo galaxy cluster.
The “Trio in Leo” is a favorite target - three galaxies glimmer in the eyepiece from a depth of roughly 35 million light years. Mere smudges - yet containing billions of stars, forever beyond our reach, softly glowing as the frogs sing in the pond. Many’s the time I’ve swept over these “island universes” (as we used to think our Milky Way the only game in town), missing their great spiral arms, star-forming regions, and unseen planets.
Makes me want to pay attention to the little things a bit closer. Who knows what else I’m missing.
(Here’s what they look like with a long-exposure photograph.)
PS. Here’s the Sherlock link:
All those galaxies with solar systems and solar systems with planets. Makes you wonder if anyone or anything is looking back, doesn't it? Symmetry or lack of it (asymmetry) always seems to lurk at the core of fundamental math and physics problems. Think about reflections in a mirror or broken mirror, for example. Considering that, the answer about if anything is looking back has to be right in front of you! You never know the truth until it becomes obvious. Sheesh! It was right in front of me all the time, eh?