Take some time to look to the heavens at night
GERARD O'NEIL
FAIRFAX NZ
For me, my heavenward observations often remind me of my youth when stars were more present in my life.
Before turning in each night, my father-in-law goes out onto the veranda and spends some minutes looking heavenward.
If you ask him what he is doing, he will respond that he is trying to work out what the weather will be like the next day. Being a farmer, he needs to know such things!
I suspect, however, that in addition to his nocturnal weather forecasting, he is also reflecting on the meaning of life by contemplating the infinity of space.
Being one of the estimated 80 per cent of the world’s population who no longer have a clear view of the night sky due to light pollution, when I visit my parents-in-law on their farm, I also now take time out to study the night sky.
Does stargazing matter? Yes.
There are all sorts of reasons why looking skyward at night is important but, for me, my heavenward observations often remind me of my youth when stars were more present in my life.
Growing up on a farm deep in South Westland in the 1970s provided many opportunities to stargaze.
Like many of my primary school friends, I caught possums in winter to earn extra pocket money. Having possum traps meant that I had to set out before dawn to check them in order to have time to arrive back home, wash, change and have breakfast before catching the school bus.
Being the middle of winter and normally cold and icy, the sky was usually crystal clear. As I walked through the frost-covered cow paddocks, I loved to stargaze. Though I did not know the names of the stars and constellations, I knew their positions in the sky by heart.
One morning, just after light, I saw a bright object travelling across the sky so fast that it left a vapour trail. As I watched, it streaked behind a small cloud where it promptly exploded, turning the cloud green for a few seconds.
I was so shocked and afraid that I turned around and ran home as quickly as possible. I was sure what I had just witnessed was the opening salvos of a nuclear war with Russia.
The moment I got home, my mother turned me around and sent me back out again. She was not going to allow a possum caught in one of my traps to suffer all day just because I had mistaken a meteorite for an exploding Russian nuclear warhead.
Another way to earn some extra money at that time was through commercial eeling. My elder cousin had a license to supply eels to the Hari Hari factory and often invited me to go with him to check his traps. As eels are more active at night, many of these expeditions were nocturnal affairs.
I remember stopping frequently while rowing across Lake Rotokino to stargaze. My cousin taught me the name of various stars and constellations, as well as the difference between shooting stars, which streaked across the sky, and satellites which maintained a slow constant speed.
It took much longer to spot the satellites than the shooting stars, as there were few of them orbiting the earth at time.
When I was thirteen, we moved to the city and so my stargazing hobby was put on hold. After finishing secondary school, however, I spent a lot of time messing about in yachts and so had an opportunity take up my nocturnal sky watching pastime again.
One star-studded, moonless night during a voyage from Wellington to Suva, I experienced one of the strangest sensations I have ever felt.
I was alone on watch when the wind petered out and the sea became glassy smooth. Without even the slightest of ripples, the ocean quickly became a gigantic mirror.
The sky was reflected so perfectly that I soon found myself totally disorientated. I could not tell which way was up and which was down, or where east or west was, south or north.
The technical term for what I experienced is called spatial disorientation. This is a person’s inability to correctly determine their body position in space. Pilots and underwater divers are especially prone to this phenomenon.
In my case, the sensation was of drifting weightlessly through space. Without sound, without a sense of direction or purpose, I was overcome with a feeling of wonder and peace and a hope that what I was witnessing would never stop.
I remember thinking about angels and astronauts, because being closer to heaven than I was at that moment I suspect was impossible.
Just to make sure I was not dreaming, I leant over the side to touch the ocean to make sure it was still there.
After about five minutes, a small puff of wind blew past causing a slight ripple, which shattered the mirror.
When did you last take time out to stargaze or marvel at a natural phenomenon?
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