Aroostook Skies: The sky less traveled
By Larry Berz
The sky is there! What we choose to do with that reality really depends upon our own perceptions and inclinations. Its sheer immensity overpowers our ability to process its message and we are left groping and coping with our own limitations.
It is the keeper of clouds, the spatial ocean for sun, moon, planets and stars to convey and convoy their steadfast march across day and night. Sadly, apart from mother’s guidance, we remain left to our own devices, from adolescence onwards, to establish relevancy with the sky Therefore, most of us rely upon artists, poets, musicians, and especially biblical truth and imagery to establish the necessary metaphors, verbiage, and tones to make “contact.” The potato farming community also served an essential role in maintaining close communion with the heavens, but with the demise of the popular potato culture within families at large, we sorrowfully see another blight of cosmic connection.
I hope sensitive readers will continue to seek the sky, by both day and night. Can we indeed consummate a unique affection with the brightness and darkness of the heavenly canopy? I believe so, but like most quests, this one requires a unique discipline — a venture into a solitary place of the highest, utmost awareness. Earth, however, enjoys such a complex set of atmospheric diversity that we can jump into the fray easily enough.
March skies in Aroostook were particularly well suited to some sky identification. Who but the most inured could avoid contact with the touching proximity of planets Venus and Jupiter in western twilight. A consort of sublime crescent moonlight added poignancy to the blustery nights of late March as well. The seasonal transitions of this month always heighten the drama of the sky show.
Please take full advantage of the upcoming weeks to continue to bask in the unalloyed light of the Evening Star, Venus. Remarkably on the 4th of the month, a Wednesday night, you, yes you, with a handy set of binoculars will see our beautiful Venus nestled within the “seven sisters” Pleiades, the gem of open galactic clusters. Hearken and make every effort to see this sorority of celestial sisters.
Mars as well continues to bark rustily in high southern skies, unmistakable due to its unique flame. And Saturn sneaks into view by late evening hours, peeking above the southeastern horizon in close companionship with the sickle star itself, lovely blue Spica.
Robert Frost, American poet of politics and power, once spoke of the road less traveled upon a snowy evening in New England. Author M. Scott Peck wrote a remarkable book upon the same theme. And that choice made all the difference. Now, you, too, can cultivate the sky less traveled in search of your own personal communion with perhaps the greatest and freest of human gifts, the sky itself. What you fill find upon the road remains a mystery.
And as Albert Einstein once penned, “the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
So open your eyes and stay in touch with Spring skies, Aroostook County. All of us certainly earned reward if only we claim and aim upwards!
Larry Berz is director of Easton’s Francis Malcolm Planetarium and astronomy instructor at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
