In the woods, the plains or the city, it often takes an extra thought to think of looking up. At dawn, the light comes strongly from the horizon and brings our attention to what is above us. In Arthur Clarke's story "Childhood's End", enormous alien space ships quietly enter our sky to stay quiet and still for a couple of centuries. They are 50 kilometers up in the sky and humans learn to accept them. The story is available in most libraries and downloadable for $1.99 and free for Kindle Borrowing.
It is true that the night sky with all those dots of light in it has mystified and inspired humans for millennia. It is also true that a recent talk we attended on stars explained that clever, steady and rigorous work in astronomy, cosmology and physics has uncovered during the last 100 years new facts and given foundation to new theories. We learned about the H-R diagram and its importance in understanding the likely path of the "life" or existence of a star. H-R doesn't stand for human relations but for the names of two astronomers, Hertzsprung and Russell who created the chart in 1910. It shows that big, hot stars exist as is for a very long time but that smaller, not quite so hot stars tend to last much longer. We are talking billions of years and the universe we know is said to be only about 13 billion years old. I asked our lecturer how long the universe is expected to last and she said,"Hopefully, forever."
Lynn's photo shows the color and majesty, the awe-inspiring possibilities of the sky at dawn and at dusk. We are entering autumn and the extent that our lives are always affected by our local star gets emphasized. The daily "rise" and "fall" of our star and the consequent change in the amount and type of air its light travels through has a big effect on what we see. The long shadows cast by sunlight traveling close to the ground change the scenes around us. Those moments when special lighting effects are in place offer occasional beauty worth noting and thanking.
--
