These past two weeks have presented one of the best stretches of night sky wonder I can remember. As I’ve slowly deepened my engagement of contemplating creation through astronomy, I’ve found a “sweet spot” of conditions that I hope for.
- Not only clear skies, but low humidity.
- I’m the atypical Wisconsinite that prefers fall and winter due to night beginning at about 5:00pm. Why? I can do astronomy and astrophotography and still be in bed by 10:00.
- Favorable Moon cycles – New Moon being most desired.
- Time – The ability with a complex schedule to find the time to not only do astronomy and astrophotography, but restful time for my mind and body so I can enjoy it.
- Sacred Surprises – The occasional Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that directly hits the Earth never hurts!
Obviously, this sweet spot list is not only good for me, but for any astronomer/astrophotographer. Needless to say, to satisfy all these conditions is very rare. Thankfully, these past two weeks met all of these criteria. So, what did I see? We can start with aurora.
As I arrived at my favorite location to image Northern Lights, I instantly smiled getting out of my car and looked at the sky. I imagined a local farmer protesting, “I thought the weather man said it was going to be clear tonight… where did all these clouds come from?” The aurora was so strong it made horizon stars difficult to see to the naked eye. It wasn’t the most consistent of aurora through the night, but the eruption moments were amazing!
Here is a time lapse I captured of the aurora that evening. The video on the left is the raw time laps from my camera. To the right, I re-edited it and slowed it down to try and present the feel of what I saw that evening. Hint: If you jump to the 2 minute mark of the video on the right, you can see the moment of transition from good aurora to an aurora eruption!
Needless to say, nights like this are powerful, memorable and inspiring. Experiences like these make me want to go out every night and just gaze in wonder at the night sky.
Most of time, these nights are “one-off” events, forcing me to wait patiently for another rare clear evening. But these past two weeks were different. The clear nights just kept coming, and coming, and coming.
After my vacation to Spain, I went to visit my parents to share stories and souvenirs. I took my camera home with me in the hopes I could get some nice night land scape images of the farm.
God provided! These are some of my favorite images I’ve taken of my childhood home.
But wait! There’s more! When I got back to the rectory after my day visiting my parents, the clear nights just kept coming. This allowed me to revisit some deep space targets I love to image.
The Flame and Horse Head Nebulae to the left. (328 stacked exposures)
And the best image of the Andromeda Galaxy I’ve ever taken below (400 stacked exposures)
I’ll wrap up here for this post. I don’t want to become the annoying uncle whose slide show never ends. These past two weeks were by far some of the best skies I can remember. For that, thank you God! Here’s one of my favorite sections of Laudato Si’ for your prayerful consideration.
This contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us, since “for the believer, to contemplate creation is to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice”.[57] We can say that “alongside revelation properly so-called, contained in sacred Scripture, there is a divine manifestation in the blaze of the sun and the fall of night”.[58] Paying attention to this manifestation, we learn to see ourselves in relation to all other creatures: “I express myself in expressing the world; in my effort to decipher the sacredness of the world, I explore my own”.[59]
86. The universe as a whole, in all its manifold relationships, shows forth the inexhaustible riches of God. Saint Thomas Aquinas wisely noted that multiplicity and variety “come from the intention of the first agent” who willed that “what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another”,[60] inasmuch as God’s goodness “could not be represented fittingly by any one creature”.[61] Hence we need to grasp the variety of things in their multiple relationships.[62] We understand better the importance and meaning of each creature if we contemplate it within the entirety of God’s plan. As the Catechism teaches: “God wills the interdependence of creatures. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tells us that no creature is self-sufficient. Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other”.[63]
87. When we can see God reflected in all that exists, our hearts are moved to praise the Lord for all his creatures and to worship him in union with them. This sentiment finds magnificent expression in the hymn of Saint Francis of Assisi:
Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
who is the day and through whom you give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour;
and bears a likeness of you, Most High.
Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful.
Praised be you, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather
through whom you give sustenance to your creatures.
Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Water,
who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.
Praised be you, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night,
and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong”.[64](Pope Francis, Laudato Si, Paragraphs 85-87)
