Did you see it? Did you SEEEE any of the meteor shower brought to us by the tail of the Swift-Tuttle Comet? Hearing earlier in the day Saturday that the Perseids would be visible over our fair city, I made a plan to take a look.
A house guest, Elle, and I decided to watch from yoga blankets on the patio. I saw what turned out to be the BEST of the bunch of small streaks across the sky within the first five minutes of watching. It was huge and arcing from zenith toward the southwest corner of my visible piece of sky. Just as in the Christmas Carol, “Do You See What I See?,” this shooting star had a “tail as big as a kite!” Wide, colorful and the slowest of the bunch to burn out and dissipate in the overly bright night sky, it was truly breath-taking. I took a breath in and after a long while exhaled a satisfied, “WOW!!” At that point, I was alone outside in the back yard and yelled into the house, “I SAW one!” My beloved let out with a muffled, exhausted and distracted, “Mmmmm....” Elle came out a few minutes later. Truly, I DID see it! Shortly before eleven P.M. Anybody else witness it?
Trouble with trying to see anything in Los Angeles’ night sky is that the throbbing life of this luminescent metropolis outshines the subtle more delicate radiance of celestial bodies in motion. Something so self-important about that - insinuating ourselves into the spectrum of visible light with our gaudy neon and comforting incandescents.
The last time I remember seeing stars with any clarity in the city was just after the 1994 Northridge Quake when the electricity went out for a few days. Our family and two others slept out in our back yard because the aftershocks were just too shocking after the initial temblor knocked us all around. Our friends’ homes were in pretty bad shape, so they came to us - where the damage was only cosmetic (including the earring that Marvin Gardens the Golden Retriever ate while we were sleeping on the the grass) - and we were having fun camping out.
This past Saturday evening, Elle and I tried to coax another great show out of the sky by singing, “Good Morning Star Shine” from the musical Hair and eventually devolving into Mozart’s “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Perhaps Mozart should never be considered a devolution, but that melody has been associated with the nursery school crowd in the last fifty years or so, and our culture takes it for “elementary.” Elle and I settled on sounding, “Uuuuuuu” on C sharp, which, as everyone knows, is the preferred frequency of ET beings - multitudes of whom, at any given moment, are circling the globe. Did you know that? Neither did I! Survey says...
I awoke at 4:56 a.m. Sunday with a familiar need and decided, while I was up, to look again, as the best viewing was said to be just before dawn on the twelfth. I took the yoga blankets up on the roof - easy access through the bathroom window - and lay down at a perfect angle to see the eastern sky. There, above the huge pine, I saw the prettiest configuration of Jupiter, the crescent moon and Venus
(photo by Matthew Henderson of Perseids
over Lake Berryessa, California)
I saw seven “shooting stars” in thirty minutes and a small and rapid satellite in its orbit. How refreshing to revel in my insignificance in this grand cosmos. I love feeling this perspective... that I’m only a small bit of matter on a splendid planet spinning through a quadrant of a medium sized galaxy of the Universe (or is it a Multi-verse this week?), quite willing to suspend disbelief and hold onto the idea that there’s rhyme and reason to this whole She-BANG!
I sang softly to myself a song I wrote in 1996 while watching the constellation of Orion rising over the coastal mountains on my way back from Santa Barbara:
Orion, wear your triple-star-belt, and stride across the sky
Teach me of humility and pride. Seeking balance am I.
Time-out-of-mind, you died for love when a scorpion stung your heel
Artemis punished you for your pride... Humble Pie your last meal
Artemis guarded the young and small; your job to hunt and kill
You piled high the bodies of her critters dear to show the goddess your skill
Artemis wailed, despaired then turned and caused that scorpion to strike
Hubris your crime, not merely pride... she flung your bones to the sky.
When I look up and see you there, the stars on your belt count to three
Betwixt groveling and hubris - appropriate pride... seeking balance am I
Orion, wear your triple-star-belt and stride across the sky...
To share my excitement about the Persied event, log on to science@nasa.gov
To view the event in person, put on some long sleeves or herbal insect repellent and go outside about four a.m. Monday or Tuesday...
See ya, sky-watchers! YOU are a STAR!!
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