THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
207-780-4249       www.usm.maine.edu/planet
70 Falmouth Street  Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N,                    70.2667° W
Founded January 1970
             "Fare thee well, Major Tom."






THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Monday, January 11, 2016
Winter Sky



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THE ASTRONOMY CAFE:  Winter Night Sky Tour
Tonight
Monday, January 11, 2016   at 7:00 p.m.

Twice a year, the Astronomy Cafe focuses solely on the sky.
In January, we offer a winter night sky tour.  In July, we set our
sights on the summer night sky.

Join us this evening as we voyage across the winter evening skyscapes.

Admission by donation.

Doors open a 6:30 p.m.

Call 207-780-4249     e-mail   [log in to unmask] or consult our
web-site  www.usm.maine.edu/planet

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It is all delusional, but not so bad for all that.
That evening, he ventured into the darkness and snapped on the
interrogration-bright lights.  At once the planetarium emerged from
the Stygian gloom.   It didn't seem at all perturbed by that abrupt
awakening.   One would think an inverted half sphere incapable of any
thoughts or emotions, at all.   In this, one would be mistaken.   He
sensed the planetarium in that moment, like Nietzsche's abyss, looking
into him as he looked into it.     Unlike the abyss, the planetarium
evinced a cheerful eagerness to get on with it and conjure the stars.
 He couldn't tell you how he discerned this emotion anymore than he
could tell you all the mystical encounters that transpired in the dome
during those times when humans didn't occupy it.     He didn't need
to, of course.   As the dome demanded, he simply needed to get on with
it.

He maneuvered around the console, switched from the brilliant white to
the softer yellow lights and reached down to flip the planetarium
projector switch.     Small lights appeared on the panel, illuminating
some of the buttons and the phosphorescent green labels that were
scarcely legible anymore.    Installed in 1989, the projector was
showing its age, but in a dignified way, like a cozy, albeit
threadbare cardigan.    Of course. as he discovered a moment after
turning it on, the projector had dutifully brought forth the stars.
With the yellow lights pervading the dome, these stars showed faintly,
as the real ones first appear behind graying twilight.     He turned
the yellows off and at once they were cast into the open sea with a
night sky extending to all points from stem to stern.

Unlike the real sky that revolves around us with a glacial
inexorability,  this contrived sky remained at first static.   After
all, these stars were merely produced by intensely bright light
shining through copper foils adorned with pinpricks.  These tiny holes
were arranged so as to replicate the configuration of the real stars.
 Beholding the planetarium sky is to behold a beautiful illusion: one
that manipulates the mind into believing that wizards managed to
capture the unbounded heavens and encapsulate them into an underground
chamber.

He hastened to move the sky so as to set it for the date.   He knew
that people would be arriving soon.  Or, more correctly, he didn't
know who would arrive.  Some shows are played to full houses; others
to a smattering of souls.      Still others attract nobody.
Nevertheless, he had to prepare for the program while the Universe
determined the audience size.

Delphinus the Dolphin poised above the western evening horizon.
This small bejeweled constellation had a special significance for him.
  Its descent, though heralding the onset of deepest winter,
occasioned him a profound delight. The dolphin's departure, like a
toasty updraft of air rising from sun warmed February pavement, was a
promise of revived warmth and growth.

Arising from the west, the Milky Way Galaxy.    The nucleus, tucked
away behind Sagittarius, was well below the horizon.     In the dome,
it appeared as a luminescent arc tinctured by black filaments.
The actual Milky Way, scarcely more than a phantom in all but the
darkest skies, was more resplendent with color than a human eye could
behold.  The ruddy red dwarfs; blue-white supergiants; vast nebula
fields tinctured by iridescent green.  All muted by distance into an
amorphous wispy white glow.

The Pegasus diamond, within which one detects only the slightest
suggestion of a winged horse, hovers amidst a swallowing darkness.
The stars comprising Pegasus linger outside the galactic plane and are
thus more distinct when set against the unsounded depths of
intergalactic space.     Shimmering faintly above the horse, the
magnificent Andromeda Galaxy:  in our dome seen merely as a diffuse
light patch.    In reality, an island Universe destined to merge with
the Milky Way in billions of years.    Displaced from our shores: a
hint of a future so abstract as to be inconceivable.

Circumpolar constellation Cassiopeia, reclining in her northern throne
and shying away from the sprinting Perseus.     Like the disgraced
queen, Perseus is of the ancient realm, when the world was electric
with sorcery and presided over by an long since vanished Olympus.

Fearsome Taurus confronting the giant Orion.   The dome renders them
both minuscule.  The real sky casts them onto the sky larger than life
and grander than any spire that ever protruded from our Earth.
All of it above him and that which hung below the planet: a planet
that turned in the bottomless void.

That was the truth that he acknowledged when he leaned back in his
chair and turned off the stars.    Nothing could compare to what
existed beyond our thin atmosphere.   The planetarium provided an
image: a reflection of reality at room temperature.  There was no
crunching snow, no meteor flares; no entranced sky watchers oblivious
to the biting cold and wondering why we care so much about that which
remains so distant.

He checked the time and a minute later opened the door.
He didn't know who would attend.
He did know that it was all delusional, but not so bad for all that.