Saturn in the Sky! and Thoughts on Dark Skies
I Photoshopped this image of Saturn to approximate what I saw last night through a pretty strong telescope, during a summer solstice fundraiser event to support Dark Skies.
Even the Cassini Division—a black gap in the rings around Saturn—was visible! I’ve seen the craters of the moon through binoculars, followed the comet Hale-Bopp through the skies of ’97, and am always in awe of shooting stars and falling meteors, but this was by far one of my favorite sights.
Speaking of Dark Skies, on a recent stay on the west bank of Luxor, I happened to be in town on the main road when the lights went out all through the area, including the village of Al Barat. This is a common occurrence, unfortunately, but it was unusual for me to be headed home in the darkness and gave me opportunity to see the gebel (mountains) and sky as it once was throughout Upper Egypt, as though traveling back (only a few decades) in time. The gebel are usually illuminated with high-powered lights cast upward to highlight the dramatic cliffs and hollows, while each temple entrance is also lit so that the mountains look like a beehive of openings.
But the blackout effected the mountain lights as well, this night. How beautiful and rare it was to see the gebel cast in the midnight shadows, a dark but pale ghost against the black starred sky. It seemed even grander then I’d ever seen it before, day or night.
It also reminded me of the night paintings captured by Lockwood De Forest some hundred years earlier here in Luxor, of full moons over landscapes of darkness.
Indeed, I learned to enjoy the blackouts as an opportunity to see things which would otherwise be difficult, for the lights of Egypt continue to grow more powerful and blinding (like the rest of the world), and all the sky and its stars are endangered from ever being enjoyed again save for those remote areas so difficult to reach. It was only during such blackouts that I saw falling stars cross the sky. And with no lights in my home and no electric distractions, where else to look but up for the evenings entertainment?
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