The Moon & The Star
Yesterday was the third (partial) solar eclipse after 2013 and 1999, that I can remember. And every time it’s fascinating how some giant rock is moving right in front of our star and can dim our daylight. It’s quite an astronomical mechanics show.
I used the giant binoculars, that my dad gave me, to observe this spectacle in the sky. But beware, never look directly into sun. You’ll burn your eyes irreversibly. I used a white piece of paper to project the view without damaging my eyes.
You can project it on your hands as well.
Thanks to my dad I developed a fascination for astronomy as well. The night sky as your time machine, where you can look back thousands of light years and see stars and galaxies that probably don’t exist anymore, but also enjoying the craters of our personal satellite - the Moon.
Back in 1993, while visiting the Big Island on Hawai’i, I experienced what I still call the night of the elements. We went to see the crater of Kilauea and the lava flow into the Pacific Ocean. In the evening we lay on the still warm but solid as a rock lava and enjoyed a spiritual moment:
FIRE of the crater of Kilauea, WATER of the Pacific Ocean, AIR from the winds around the world, EARTH where we were laying on and above all that a clear sky with billions of stars, that you wouldn’t be able to see in a city or near a town because of the artificial light pollution disturbing the darkness.
If you have a bucket list, put that one on it.