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Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies!
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1855-1889)
Not to long ago, I found myself doing army reserve duty on an isolated base located in a desert. Late one evening, I took a look at a magnificent, dark, night sky and was filled with frustration. There wasn't a single cloud above, nor the Moon; simply thousands of sparkling stars and I was stuck in the middle of nowhere without even a pair of binoculars, much less a decent telescope.
Being under this jet-black sky without the barest equipment seemed at the moment to be such a wasted opportunity that I almost returned to my tent in disgust. It was at that moment that I realized that I had fallen into a trap.
For a brief moment, the techniques of skygazing and the apparatus had become more important than the stars and the planets themselves. Binoculars, telescopes, sky atlases and red cellophane-covered flashlights are all useful tools, but if I couldn’t enjoy the night sky without them, what was the point of looking upwards at all?
The most essential skygazing equipment I always carry with me. First of all, there was my knowledge of the constellations. While I know only a portion of the 88 constellations, there was something familiar in almost every part of the sky. I also had engraved in my memory images of the sky from many different nights which provided a clear distinction between the fixed and wandering objects of the sky, the familiar and the unusual.
I also possessed a few bits of helpful knowledge such as the location of the imaginary pathway of the planets. I knew which objects were relatively close and which unbelievably far away.
I then took a short walk away from some of the lights and found a comfortable spot on which to lie down. I used the first few minutes to met my eyes adjust and search out the constellation. From the Big Dipper, I jumped to Bootes and then to Virgo. I traced out the faint image of Hercules and marveled at the sapphire-blue Vega in the Lyra constellation.
Pegasus and Andromeda were rising out of the eastern horizon. I tried to see the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. Looking out of the corner of my eye, I just managed to see a wisp of light that came from our neighboring galaxy and contemplated that this bit of light represented an object that was vastly larger than all of the other objects that I was seeing in the sky.
I turned toward our own galaxy, the Milky Way. It began as a thick cloud on the southern horizon around the constellation Sagittarius and passed through Aquila, Cygnus and finally Cassiopiea close by the North Star, Polaris. Finally, I looked along the ecliptic and saw Mars, Jupiter and Saturn widely separated and yet still connected to that line through the heavens containing the Solar System.
For a while, I just let my eyes flow over the sky at random, sometimes taking in an entire constellation or concentrating on a single bright star. Everything was as I expected it to be, cold and majestic. The planets, stars and even distant galaxies travelling almost complacently on their individual paths.
And then suddenly just above Jupiter flashed a streak of light brighter than Venus – a meteor or perhaps even a fireball. A brilliant head was followed by a tapering tail. I was no longer merely looking at the sky, but gazing at it; the wonder, which isn't dependent on binoculars and telescopes, had returned.