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 "Keeping a watchful eye on a complex sky." THE DAILY ASTRONOMER Wednesday, March 23, 2016 If you Love Astronomy, you might want to delete this, ...because astronomy doesn't happen here. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the secret. We offer seashells that we pick and polish from the shore whilst the great toss and tumult of the cosmos roars at our edges. Read an astronomy article, or sit in the dark planetarium confines and you behold the machinations of admirers: the real astronomy happens beyond all boundaries. So, follow me... First thing you'll notice upon venturing into Earth's shadow is the darkness, itself. Yes, first note: we spent our nights nestled at the base of a planet's shadow cone, one that gradually tapers down to a point nearly 820,000 miles away. (This value varies, like everything else in this restless Universe.) Second is the air. Fantastic. Feel it? Choose whatever descriptive adjectives you want for the bracing chill of these early spring breezes. (In places like Arizona, where all children are nourished with ambrosia and hardship is an 18th century curiosity, such chill is merely theoretical. For us hardy folk consigned to northern climes, the Arctic-sweetened wisps and stings are all too commonplace.) Yet, think but this and all is mended, that we inhale the exhalations of the world. Caesar and his ilk and Charlemagne and all the other historical figures constantly inhaled oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide which the planet's plants reprocessed back into 02. Mixing and turning and diving from Himalayan summits to dessicated valleys...passing for an instant before your breath dissolves into the night. Even before we peer up, we experience the dynamism of an unquiet world. Behold Orion descending toward the west. The real Orion: the Egyptian Osiris, Gilgamesh, Long Sash, and the myriad other characters that star-adorned rectangle has assumed through the ages. Its component stars move with furious inexorability through the galaxy's vacuums, but they are so distant, their proper motions are subtle and the constellations retain their shapes over thousands of years. The Orion that stepped over pyramids now reclines on roof tops. Describing a diffuse arc to Orion's west is the thin galactic arc. The cross-section view on the Milky Way Galaxy extending this evening from the northwestern to southeastern horizon. We once described this galaxy as a whirlpool of stars and now it is a self-contained Universe of solar systems. There was a time even in this last generation when we wondered if our planetary system was unique. A quirk of fate in a planet-poor star field. (Such an attitude is a residue of the myopic self-centered philosophy that is exceedingly difficult for us to abandon. ) Now, we realize that our solar system is just one of billions: a retinue of spheres tucked away in the galaxy's wilderness. We admire the galaxy's arm segment traversing our sky and now wonder how many others on remote surfaces are beholding the same. The abyss looks back at us. The crescent Moon growing each night and moving eastward. The closest orb to Earth is the fastest traveler: completing a circuit in less than a month. More compelling than its speed is it's proximity and illumination. We see it because it reflects Sun light. So, when we behold the crescent's silvered bow and horns, our eyes are actually receiving photons that literally touched the lunar surface less than 1.5 seconds earlier. That was the International Space Station serenely sailing through the firmament, teasing the Big Dipper's handle: receding specter-like into the blackness. A moment before, it passed a few hundred miles above Cape Cod, and as we see it fade toward the horizon, it hangs above the distant Atlantic and in a blink, over Iceland. When it happens by again, the Sun will be too far to touch it and it shall fly above us invisibly. However, it is but one of thousands: a swarm of satellites passing above and below each other as though meandering through layers of catacombs. Astronomy is the act of engaging: lying on the ground and knowing that you breathe the planet's air, absorb the moon's reflected light, and recline in a shadow extending from soil to vacuum. No planetarium can compete with that.