"Love the Sky!"

The other night, my husband and I went out to the nearby soccer fields, where we had a clear view of the western sky, to wait and watch for the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet.  Named for the two observatories where it was discovered, in China and South Africa respectively, the comet was only discovered a year ago, and is not expected to return for 80,000 years, if at all. 

Hale-Bopp

I’d fallen in love with comets when Hale-Bopp graced us with its presence for over a year from 1996 to 1997.  It was my constant companion on my drives home from teaching night classes. It felt like my friend, and I missed it when it was gone.  

Tsuchinshan-Atlas

So I was not about to miss this once-in-a-lifetime comet! We waited and watched, waited and watched. As we waited, several dense flocks of geese — there must have been hundreds — flew overhead, well worth the wait in and of themselves. Finally, my husband said, “I see it!”  It took me a moment, but then I saw the faintest white line right where my astronomer friend, Bob, had said it would be.  (Thanks, Bob, for the great directions!) As the night grew darker, the streak became a smear and then clearly the comet and its tail.  The very sight of it was exhilarating, suffusing my entire being with utter delight.

A few other people had also come to the soccer fields that night in search of wonder. One young man, Matthew, generously invited us to view the comet through the astronomy binoculars he had set up on a tripod.  The sight was stunning!  The comet was so bright, the tail so long and luminous, and better viewed together in the camaraderie of fellow comet seekers.  “Love the sky!,” Matthew exclaimed as he eagerly drew our attention to other night-sky marvels of the Andromeda galaxy and Cassiopeia – the queen of the night.

My brother, Bruce, taught me to love the night-sky when he got his first telescope at the age of nine. He’d set up his telescope in the backyard and show me the rings around Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.  When we were older, we’d sit on the dock late at night in August watching the Perseid meteor shower, something that’s become a family tradition. We all have wonderful memories of watching shooting stars together. “There’s one!,” someone would shout. “Where?,” another would respond. But it had already gone, so fleeting. But every once in a while one would streak across the sky for at least five to ten seconds, and we’d all “Wow!” in unison.  Sometimes we’d see twenty or more in an hour. What a light show!

More of a morning person than a night one, I’m more likely to greet with gladness the winter constellations visible in the pre-dawn hours — Orion – the name of my first dog, and my favorite, the Pleiades – the seven sisters.  Whether in the evening or early morn, the moon, in all of its phases, always enchants.  

Daytime sky delights abound as well.  Who doesn’t stop and marvel for a moment when a rainbow appears out of the blue?

But more than anything it’s the sunrise — whether aflame with orange, or glowing a subtle rose peach apricot lavender turquoise and mauve, or simply a bright yellow ball — that lifts my gaze to the heavens, beginning my day in awe. 

“Love the sky!,” Matthew repeated throughout the magical evening. As the small group of us together marveled at the comet that night, a string of lights like a diamond necklace raced across the sky to the east. “Elon Musk’s satellites,” one said.  This bizarre sight, clearly of human rather than cosmic origin, was indeed Musk’s Space X Starlink satellites. Even though I am using them to send this over the internet, it is not without wondering if they are not the antithesis of loving the sky, for more and more questions are being raised about their impact on the fragile layers of the sky in the higher reaches of the earth’s atmosphere, as well as the risks they pose for accelerating climate change on earth. I remember my brother excitedly taking me out to view Sputnik 1, the very first satellite launched into orbit by the Soviet Union in 1957 when I was five. But now, decades later, the atmosphere is littered with satellites and their debris. Scientists are concerned about the effects on the mesosphere – the middle layer of the atmosphere – which until recently was “calm, unspoiled and empty,” [i] and even more about the effects on the extremely sensitive stratosphere, where the ozone layer that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation lies. The emissions from the rockets used to launch the satellites pollute the stratosphere with black carbon, carbon dioxide, and water vapor from the kerosene fuel they use. Scientists speculate they also could cause temperatures in the stratosphere to rise up to two degrees Celsius, further degrading the ozone layer.

Lasting only about five years, as the satellites fall back to earth they leave more pollutants in their wake.  Scientists have found non-naturally-occurring chemicals from spacecraft in about ten percent of the stratosphere.[ii]

The Starlink satellites are even threatening the very night sky that astronomers, professional and amateur, love.  Not only do the satellites interfere with images taken through both optical and radio telescopes, they also pollute the night sky with artificial light.[iii] As the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), stated recently, "The number of low Earth orbit satellites planned to launch in the next half-decade has the potential to fundamentally shift the nature of our experience of the night sky.”[iv]

In addition to polluting the sky, in violation of the Clean Water Act, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has also polluted bodies of water near Texas.[v] Environmentalists are especially concerned about the levels of mercury -- a neurotoxin and one of the most serious threats to water systems in the US -- in the wastewater pumped out from the SpaceX water deluge system.

With the accelerating pace of Musk and now Amazon launching spacecraft and satellites into space,[vi] spewing contaminants from sky to sea and potentially destroying the atmosphere that allows for life on earth as we know it, loving the sky must also mean loving the earth – the one planet in the solar system, perhaps the galaxy, and even the universe, perfectly positioned to sustain life. This requires putting limits on such launches before any more harm is done.

…..

The sky has been replete with wonders of late – the solar eclipse in April, the Perseid meteor shower in August and now the Orionids, four supermoons, the many stunning displays of Northern Lights over the past several months with more on the way, and now the Tsuchinshan-Atlas comet. 

The sky seems to be gifting us with the very antidote we need during this time of frayed and fraught politics – granting us opportunity after opportunity for awe. As I wrote in a previous post,[vii] people who experience awe are more open, curious, thoughtful, generous, kind, willing to put aside self-interest in favor of others, less prone to political polarization, and more likely to experience joy. In other words, just what we need right now.  It is as if the universe is offering its best and wants our best in return.

As Shug says in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, “People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. . . . It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect. . .. Everything want to be loved” (178).

Love the sky!

Sources

 Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Washington Square Press, 1982.

Photo credits for photos of the crescent moon, the solar eclipse, the shooting star, and the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet to the contributors to Wikimedia Commons, and for the Aurora Borealis photo to Bob King. The rest are my own.