Modern Augustine
Astronomy is probably as old as humanity, regardless of whether we do it for science or religion or just plain enjoyment. In many ways, astronomy is the modern aestheticism, particularly appealing to introverts. One gets to do one’s work when everyone else is asleep and hence unharassed by the petty irrelevancy of other people. This is intensified by having to do one’s astronomy far from the madding crowd.
My experiences with astronomy have been limited. As an undergraduate I was exposed to astronomy by my sophomore classical mechanics professor (first semester) who was the keeper of the Campus of the Black Warrior observatory mounted atop Galilee Hall, then and, I believe now, the Physics building. What I learned then was that sharing observatory space with fellow students was a negative experience. My sharpest memories of the occasion were the usual diatribe about when Croxton came through during the Second Revolution and the mirror was buried and lost, and the eternal astronomer’’s complaint about the light of irrelevant civilization. Even in those days before the arrival of chain restaurants, fast or otherwise, stray light in the campus skyline was problematic.
My other experience came in graduate shul. This time I went out into the fields of Illinois where the research observatory was to see for myself where some of the spectroscopy data I was helping analyze came from. I learned that the prairie can be just as cold and windswept as the mountains, and being in thicker air did nothing to improve the disposition of astronomers with marginal social skills. I was primarily reminded that the difficulty of introverts is intensified by excessive alone time, too much spent listening to that wind rattling about one’ brain, the cold making the time seem infinitely longer than the clock demanded.
Nowdays I have the time, at least in theory, to pursue astronomy, but thanks to numerous medications that thin my blood and hence drastically reduce its heat capacity, lack the capacity to bear the rigors of amateur or semi-professional astronomy. And even here in Greater Metropolitan Arab I can still complain that the skyline is too bright with the travesty of MalWart and McDougal’s photons. Standing that is enough, much less their health destroying schemes for my economic substance.
But astronomy still is a bit of the call of the wild. Seeing the grandest of visual operas is thrilling, almost worth dying in place for. So it is with great relish I note this morning the photographs published by WIRED [Link] in commemoration of Hubble now being old enough to vote if not to imbibe. One has to wonder what Matthew Arnold could have done had he seen these. How can clashing armies contend with clashing galaxies?
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