Stargazing and Peace

"Saguaro Twilight"

Watercolor by myself

Based on a photograph taken by Fr. Kurzynski

Fr. James Kurzynski, a blogger for the Vatican Observatory Foundation, recently posted a reflection on stargazing as a useful corrective for persons prone to being workaholics. The measured pace of our hobby, combined with the seeming eternity of the objects we observe, can make for a rare opportunity to slow the often all too frenetic pace by which we live.

You can read his posting here:
https://www.vofoundation.org/blog/and-on-the-seventh-day-astronomy-and-sabbath-rest/

What I found interesting about his reflections was his recognition that we can all too easily drag our workaholic tendencies into what ought to be a restful hobby. Now everyone knows that I am not an astrophotographer, so I'm not tempted by the Byzantine complexities of astrogear that might take hours to set up, and can be the occasion for spending most of what ought to be a relaxing evening under the stars in cursing some recalcitrant piece of equipment that refuses to operate properly.  But even we purely visual stargazers can get caught up in a race (of our own making) against the clock, trying to cram the maximum number of DSOs into the minimum amount of time. I now look back with mixed emotions at my pride at observing 19 DSOs, 4 planets, plus a number of Perseids and the ISS in a single night at last year's Stellafane. Just what was I trying to accomplish? And who was I competing against? True, I knew that it would likely be the one and only clear night I would spend in all of 2018 under a really dark sky, so maybe I had some excuse for wanting to see as much as I could.

But I must confess that I can fall into the same trap right here at home in suburban Maryland, under our battleship gray light polluted skies. I find myself at times needing to take a deep breath, and just look...

One "spiritual exercise" I've found most effective is to randomly point my telescope at some spot in the sky, slap in a widefield eyepiece, and DON'T MOVE ANYTHING for a half hour or so. Don't look for things to observe - let them come to you. With my 90mm Stellarvue  refractor and my 30mm Pentax eyepiece, it takes about 2 minutes for a star to traverse the entire field of view at its widest point. This is of course, assuming I've pointed my scope due south. The further north one looks, the slower objects will move across the FOV (and if you're pointed at Polaris, it will never move at all). So every 2 minutes, the view is completely different.

And really LOOK at what's in your eyepiece. Once again, don't sweat it; that's not the point here. The object is to synchronize your mind and body to the motions of the universe, to move at its pace. And it can be amazing what you chance across in this exercise. I've "discovered" globular clusters that aren't in the Messier catalog, but go by lowly NGC designations. I've seen brilliant double or multiple star systems that I would never have otherwise looked for. On rare occasions, the faintest of all imaginable smudges will traverse my FOV, and I'm left wondering whether I've caught sight of a distant galaxy or a gas cloud within our own. But mostly, I see stars, stars, stars. Swirls and knots, streams and spatters of them, intriguing asterisms and possible open clusters.

It takes a good 10 minutes or so to "get in the groove", for your mind to settle down and abandon the urge to look at something else. After another 10 minutes, you find you don't want to stop. When you finally do come back down to Earth after 30, 40, 50 minutes, or even an entire hour, it feels like you've been there, leaping from star to star, cruising the Milky Way, tossed about by the stellar winds of distant suns.

Now I certainly do not recommend a steady diet of such stargazing, but once in a while it's good to just let go and allow the turning Earth do all the work for you.