Looking Up

Yesterday, not for the first time, a much-vaunted astronomical event turned out to be invisible from our house on account of it being cloudy. Late in the evening,  I glimpsed a faint glow shining through the cloud-cover where the moon was supposed to be but otherwise the view from the back door was of uninterrupted murk.

I told myself I wasn't missing much. It might be pretty to look at but, really, the fact that two planets appear, from earth, to be next to each other is neither here nor there. It probably seemed more significant centuries ago, when the earth was believed to be the centre of the universe. It's the sort of event that's of more interest to astrologers than astronomers. There are more thrilling things to look at in the sky at night - so long as the clouds hold off.

I try to make a point of looking up at the night sky every day. It helps me keep my feet on the ground, I think. If I don't have time to spot a few constellations, or see if I can make out, say, the double star in the handle of the Plough,  then it's a sign that I need to slow down and make time for such things. Constellations, of course, are as fortuitous as conjunctions but I enjoy spotting them. Now and again I try to learn new ones but it's a slow process.

We're lucky here, in that the sky is usually very dark. We live on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, which has just been named an international dark sky reserve. Sometimes you can look up from our garden and make out dark clouds in the heart of the Milky Way or see -if you know where to look- the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye. 

Of course, these days you can see amazing  astronomical photographs taken by various space probes. There's a particularly humbling one that I saw recently. It was taken by the Cassini probe and showed the earth as a distant dot peeping over the massive rings of Saturn, looking much like Venus looks from Earth.

However, I don't think any photograph can be quite as thrilling as actually seeing things for yourself, even if the images you can see through binoculars or a cheap telescope are nothing like as detailed. You never forget the first time you see the rings of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter, even if all you can make out are tiny, silvery shapes and dots.

Oh well, I just hope the clouds hold off this evening. Conjunctions may be neither here nor there but, come to think of it, I wouldn't mind taking a look and they'll still be pretty close together today.

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On a completely different tack, musicians are finding it tough these days. There are no gigs to be had. Here's a video of friend Fliss playing with the band she's in, Joli Blon. They were playing as part of a streamed benefit for the Betsey Trotwood music venue in London.