Satellights
Torrential rain during the night. The deluge woke me, and drew me to the window to stand watching the rain fall heavy and aslant through the small patch of light under the streetlamp.
Clear skies at 6am. The forest very dark, and the stars very bright. Took the track northwestwards, Orion at my back. Such a clear night that, below Cassiopeia, I could see the faint horizontal line of nameless stars that make up one corner of Andromeda.
Turning for home, Venus in the eastern sky, coming and going among the pine branches and in the puddles. Mist creeping up between the trees. Sika stags wailing.
The sky is distractingly full of movement these days. The blinking lights of jets. The steady silent lights of satellites, some faint, some bright as planets. At one time, the superwealthy could only appropriate land with their Acts of Enclosure. Now they can help themselves to the Heavens too. The night sky, our common heritage, becomes their playground.
But I did see one meteor. I had stopped to watch as a pale drifting cloud slowly devoured Taurus and the Pleiades, and an Orionid meteor flashed past the edge of the cloud, a momentary line of orange light.
Clear skies at 6am. The forest very dark, and the stars very bright. Took the track northwestwards, Orion at my back. Such a clear night that, below Cassiopeia, I could see the faint horizontal line of nameless stars that make up one corner of Andromeda.
Turning for home, Venus in the eastern sky, coming and going among the pine branches and in the puddles. Mist creeping up between the trees. Sika stags wailing.
The sky is distractingly full of movement these days. The blinking lights of jets. The steady silent lights of satellites, some faint, some bright as planets. At one time, the superwealthy could only appropriate land with their Acts of Enclosure. Now they can help themselves to the Heavens too. The night sky, our common heritage, becomes their playground.
But I did see one meteor. I had stopped to watch as a pale drifting cloud slowly devoured Taurus and the Pleiades, and an Orionid meteor flashed past the edge of the cloud, a momentary line of orange light.