The night sky. Celestial muse. Heavenly mystery.
For as long as the inky, infinite canopy of light-speckled dark has loomed overhead, it’s driven dreamers and doers alike to distraction. Yeats yearned for heaven’s cloths but settled for dreams instead. Gallileo longed to comprehend, and communicate, the hugeness of the heavens, and nearly died for his conviction that they were never ending. But if poetry and progress are the night sky’s progeny, so, too, is its predictability. Dependable Orion rising in the winter sky. The June moon, pink as a peony and always just in time.
Inevitably, the Earthbound got bored: they’ve seen one night sky, they’ve seen them all. But here’s the thing: The universe is expanding, and with it the reasons for gazing up into that good night. Beyond the sun, the moon, and the stars.
(Hosted by Robert Siegel)
Guests:
Chet Raymo, author of “An Infinite Look at The Night Sky”
and Kelly Beatty, executive editor of Sky & Telescope magazine.