Starry, starry night

The night sky has always held my fascination. My earliest memory as a child is sitting on the front step looking at the twilight sky and noticing a big white star that had just appeared. My guess is that the star was actually Venus - but that's just quibbling over semantics. At 10 years old, I purchased my first telescope - a basic refractor model from Sears. With a battered copy of the pocketbook, Stars!, I stayed up many nights searching for nebulae, double stars and planets. In college, I seriously entertained a major in astronomy until gently told that my math skills (or lack thereof) would interfere in obtaining such a degree. So, relinquishing the dream of finding some new planetary system as a professional astronomer, I have been content to remain a backyard observer of the night sky.

This evening was spent on the back porch of my cabin in Colorado where the sky opens up like a dark upside down bowl with fluorescent dots painted in patterns on the inside of the bowl. I've seen the ancient Egyptian representation of the sky goddess, Nut, stretching from one end to the other with the stars in her gown. With the constellation Sagittarius in the southern end and Casseopia to the north, the Milky Way slices the bowl straight down the middle, glowing softly with millions of stars, I am reminded vividly of Nut. Right off, two meteors shoot a path across the middle of the Milky Way. I don't know if it's the altitude or being so far from city lights or both but one can see more meteors here on a regular basis than any place else I've lived or visited. My best friend saw her first series of 'shooting stars' up here and was quite entranced. We make it a standing tradition to sit up late wrapped up in blankets watching intently for as many as we can count until we either get too cold (thin-skinned Texans always get cold!) or we begin to nod off.

So the next time you are out in the country away from city lights, look up... the most beautiful sight is just sitting above your head...