Hidden Though They Shine 9/7-11/21
I’ve
been walking in the early evening most days, aiming for about five times a week
for health purposes but motivated more by getting out of the apartment for a
break. Like many people during the pandemic, I’m at home a great many hours.
Recently
I’ve been leaving the apartment just before or right after sundown. This allows
a walk in a reasonable temperature and quite a few other walkers in my
neighborhood use those moments, too.
I’ve
noticed a few things.
A
reasonably good dog census could be formulated based on how many are wandering
the streets while towing owners, plus the number of barks I hear from inside
houses and behind fences.
Quite
a few people own pleasant suburban houses in my part of San Jose. This means
they are millionaires, or at least they will be when they sell their homes.
Many of them already have pricey cars.
But
what has captured my attention most often in the past few nights are objects beyond
the neighborhood streets.
Venus
has been rising as the sun goes down and that planet is the brightest object in
the sky after the sun and moon. I’ve noticed that it’s visible within a quarter
of an hour after the sun sets, a point of brilliance near the horizon and ready
to be mistaken by the unwary for a nearby plane or UFO.
On
the other side of the sky, Jupiter appears early in the evening, almost as
bright as Venus, remote but vivid due to its size and currently at opposition.
Draw a line from the sun through the Earth and extend it; Jupiter will be near
that line right now out in its orbit. Saturn is just visible, higher and not
far from Jupiter, following a track similar to its huge cousin as they both
trace roughly the sun’s course across the sky. Little by little they move
about, differences evident only by comparing this night’s view to the scene in
a week or more.
Saturn
is hard to see; a small handful of stars are visible from my city street.
Once
I was in the Sierra Nevada mountains on a moonless, crystal night and saw a
multitude of stars. The Milky Way and smudges that were galaxies and nebulae
covered the heavens, a breathtaking display. In my city now, with light
pollution and smog, I see a dozen or at most two. And I can barely make out
Saturn even when I know exactly where to look.
Thousands
of stars are hidden though they shine on.
As I
got home last night and paused to scan the sky again, now well past sunset, I
wondered what most human beings, living at most times in history, would think
of our night sky.
Light
pollution and smog are byproducts of the industrial revolution, and no, I’m not
suggesting that we go back to the days before factories and machinery made
modern life possible. Those mechanisms mean I have more clothes by far than a
person with a comparable living in 1750; those changes also made possible or
contributed to later revolutions in chemistry and medicine and precision
equipment of all kinds. I’m fond of electric light, and my medications and
refrigeration and automatic blood pressure cuff and recorded music. Especially
the music.
People
exchanged old for new in the transition to factories and technology-as-product,
for good or ill. This one was certainly unintended. The consequence of electric
light run rampant along with expanding cities was to obscure a view into the
cosmos that had been the shared experience of nearly everyone. It could be
useful, too, to watch the skies for regular events that informed planting or
harvest or aided navigators. But the planets and stars and galaxies and rare
visits by comets and flashing meteors also provoked awe and wonder. They prompted
on many nights conversations about our place in the cosmos. Those sights were
with us from the first moments that anyone could have been called human until,
depending on where one lived, some point in the past 200 years. A few people far
from cities still see the cosmos revealed every cloudless evening. I’m envious.
We
have artificial light, and therefore increased safety in our growing cities,
and the advantage of extended hours for pleasure or work. Few of us would
permanently trade places with those billions who lived before the industrial
revolution. We hold many wonders.
But they had the stars.
