Do Look Up
On delayed gratification and looking on the bright side of things, even in the dark.
What seems like 127 weeks ago, but was in actuality only about 17 long weeks ago, my son and I placed a hold and got in line to borrow a telescope from our public library’s “library of things.”
Standing in the dark looking at stardust in the sky has become a thing the two of us do. Sometimes we’re joined by the rest of the family, but frequently it’s just us, standing next to each other in little pockets of time, waiting and staring into space (literally). Occasionally we’ll pull out our phones to double check that we’re staring in the right direction, but if you’re looking down at a bright rectangle for too long, you’ll miss the bright orbs above.
We’ll set our alarms for 2 a.m., school night or not, to shuffle into the guest room and search its picture window for a glimpse of Perseid’s shooting stars. (Score: 45 minutes of gazing, 1 falling star. But still! A shooting star from my upstairs window, even amid the city’s light pollution.) We’ll drive to the parking lot of a neighborhood school that’s on a slight hill and has a soccer field’s width of open sky, no trees, to catch sight of the ISS whiz by overhead. Three years ago this week, we took the middle school science teacher’s prompt and stood out on patchy snow and leaves with our weak binoculars to spot the bright speck of the Great Conjunction, Jupiter’s once-every-twenty-years flyby of Saturn.
Those rinky-dink binoculars we own don’t really offer much improvement on the naked eye. Hence the library of things and hopes of a telescope strong enough to see craters (maybe even rings if we’re dreaming here), yet small enough to tote in a duffel.
Like a Christmas miracle, our number finally rolled around this past week, and we tapped into the google machine to see what we might see. I know the night sky goes on all winter (hello, aurora borealis), but I tend toward hibernation myself this time of year, so I was skeptical about our options. What luck! Our telescope had arrived almost exactly at the peak of the Geminid meteor shower, and just a couple of days before we might be able to see the crescent moon and Saturn snuggling low in the sky not too long after sunset. (Dinner and a light show well before my bedtime? Quelle chance, indeed!)
And here, dear reader, is where things hit a little snag. How long is our library of things loan? One week. And what does the forecast say about visibility during this fateful week? Cloudy with a chance of disappointment. Cue the Stones and “You caaaaaan’t always get what you waaaant…”
However, as those now-well-preserved rockers continue, “But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find, you get what you need.” On the last night of the telescope’s stay, the skies finally cleared. And so our narrator (me) and protagonist (the teen) found themselves tromping into the backyard in 20-degree temps, testing the narrow gaps between tree branches, and awkwardly trying to figure out how to judge the relationship between the sighting scope and the main lens, until that sunlit, cratered rock finally came into view.
Even in the cold of a Midwestern winter night, I have no chill when it comes to astronomical sights. And though the moon is a commonplace sight, something we can easily discern without the aid of magnification, still it took my breath away (it wasn’t the cold, I swear) to see it on this night, as the clock on our loan ticked down, standing next to my son who is now taller than me though it seems that just last week he was barely skimming my waist, learning to pump his legs on the swing for the first time in almost exactly this spot in the yard.
La lune was just under half full and looked as if it were falling into itself along the darkened edge where the Earth’s shadow fell — like a deflated beach ball that’s been folded concave, a dome or a wobbly bowl depending on how you orient it.
When we’d had our fill and carried the tripod back inside to pack it up for the next person on that library holds list, our hands were a little numb and the to-dos of homework and holiday lists started nagging again. Before we went out there, it might have felt a little disappointing to “only” see our next-door neighbor the moon, after waiting all that time for our turn with the telescope. But we did wait all those months, and you know what?
We may have missed the meteors, but man, we caught the moon!
POSTSCRIPT:
Back in December 2020 when we sighted the Great Conjunction, I posted this description of the experience on Instagram in response to a friend whose skies were cloudy that night and said she was seeing it through our eyes. And this pretty much sums up the zing of joy I experience when I get myself out into the dark and look for something outside our little atmospheric bubble:
Just imagine crunching through old snow in the early evening, sky deep indigo but slightly desaturated. You know it’s not late, but it’s weirdly dark. And you’re lucky enough to be able to see a few stars in the sky and the crescent moon and maybe an airplane, probably a satellite bright and high. But you don’t really know what you’re supposed to see in the southwestern sky, or how far above the horizon you should be looking. And there are so many trees and houses in that quadrant that you really don’t think you’ll find that great conjunction with your eyes.
And then! You see a particularly bright spot that sort of looks lopsided. And you think, maybe, maybe that’s it. And when you relax your eyes a little the two dots distinguish themselves.
And although to the naked eye it’s just two little specks of light, the thrill it gives you is outsize. It’s a firework of hope and gratitude, transporting us out of our small isolated space, if only for a few minutes.
Happy Solstice, all.
I have been stargazing with both of you and can attest: magic stuff happens.
i love this. is there anything better than staring at the moon with our sons?