As summer arrives, amusement parks open their gates. The smell of hamburgers and waffle cones fill the air along with the faint waft of grease and wood from an old roller coaster. Glowing neon. Pulsing bulbs on a Ferris wheel. The clicks and clacks of a coaster coursing on invisible rails pierce the darkening night with clues of a greater design unseen.
A hundred yards from the entry gates and one’s anticipation grows. And if you are older, nostalgia visits you, perhaps longing for days when your world was linear and laid out by slowly-moving hours. You enter the gates; you are young.
Like a traveler waiting with ticket in hand, skygazers experience a nervous anticipation. For them, they wait for the day to slip into a darkening blue. The fallen sun extinguishes. From our small outpost 26,000 light-years from the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, we look up — and out — into the universe.
Regardless if one is a newcomer to astronomy, or an old passenger stopping to watch, anyone interested in the night sky seems to have a story. Few experiences in life are greater than viewing an object in a telescope and it meets you eye-to-eye. The light stretches its hand from billions of miles across the firmament. And for once, you realize the heavens have been with you every night of your life.
Photos credits:
- Banner by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
- Ferris Wheel by Jake Blucker on Unsplash
- Milky Way by Benjaminrobyn Jespersen on Unsplash
The Garden Astronomer 