At this sundown I shall once more witness a fury, a passion, an embroidery of sparks and blazes and beams, upon a slowly-moving backdrop, constructed of those which define the heavens in their eternal guise of permanence. At this sundown I will laugh with glee, the purest and finest of glee which is felt in moments of awe. I shall bask in the rays of my Geminids, which fail not to entertain and delight with a natural simplicity that resounds through the night sky.
With the completion of our FM Radio Astronomy Project, which detects the scattering of meteors as they impact our atmosphere, right on time for one of the annual meteor showers, the Geminids, I readied myself for something I'd never witnessed before. A meteor shower in all its glory. I knew that tonight was just a glimpse of what is to come in the wee hours of Friday, but in all the honesty that so defines my character, I must say that I was blown into a state of such awe and near-catharsis.
A few friends and I headed to the desolate and dark cricket grounds on our campus, and set up our FM Radio Astronomy antenna and other apparatus. We had with us the astronomy binoculars we'd purchased together, and a camera with tripod. After the apparatus was secured, few of our watchers would exclaim in delight as the first few meteors of the Geminids struck the sky, while keeping a count. We then set up chairs back to back, forming a sort of pentagon with each person looking on to one-fifth of the sky, and gazed up. Meteors rained, slowly building up pace. We yelled ourselves hoarse for every single one, and in particular at the really slow-burning beauties which struck the sky on occasion. The count soon grew to massive, unexpected proportions, with meteors everywhere. We ended the night with a total of 127 meteors on count, and this was just on the eve of the eve of the peak day of the Geminids. Oh the triumph I felt tonight, there is rarely anything this sweet.
The most glorious moment of tonight was definitely what we called the 'fireball'. I was trying to locate the Messier's Object M50 in the constellation of Monoceros using the binoculars, when a huge red ball filled the apertures. It was so fast moving and sudden that I pulled down the binoculars, gazing ahead with my mouth wide open. A huge orb was plunging straight out of the night sky, and my heartbeat just ceased for a few seconds. The orb burned a bright bluish-green before extinguishing magnificently, nearly touching the horizon. For a minute I even thought that this was how we died! The moment left such a chill in me - a chill which couldn't be bested by even the frigid winds of 2 am in the middle of a lakeside cricket ground!
The startrails of the night, with our observation group ghost-like with reflected light.
I leave you now with a song which I often characterize with eternity... and if the stars are not eternal, what could possibly be so? Selkies: The Endless Obsession, by Between the Buried and Me.
