Mastodawn

Prof. Sam Lawler Jan 11, 2023

Just over 3 years ago, I moved to a farm where I can see the Milky Way from my back door. Despite being an astronomer, I've never had that kind of personal access to a dark sky before, and it totally changed my relationship with the sky.

I have always loved looking at the stars, but now I also feel a shared ownership of this natural resource with all of humanity, past, present, and future. This is my sky! Our sky! Our human history!

(1/n)

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John Sandel

@sundogplanets
@cptvideo
Favorite memory of lounging on a pine deck in deep rural Vermont, years ago, smoking a Cohiba after midnight. The cigar smoke hung above me like a veil in the summer air. I waved it away, but it stayed—& in a moment of cognitive dissonance my eyes saw beyond the "smoke" & into the black of space. It was like changing focus on a camera—I was seeing the Milky Way, the plane of the galaxy, tilted on edge above (below?) me. A vertiginous thrill!