Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

If you can spot the stars Altair, Deneb, and Vega during the summer, you will see that they form a triangle. And that triangle always points south. If you are ever lost, you can find those three and know which way to go.

Nothing you or I could do will ever alter them. They are so much bigger than us. And they will not change within our lifetime. We can succeed or fail, get it right or get it wrong, love and lose the ones we love, and still the Summer Triangle will point south. And in that way, I know everything will be some type of okay—as impossible as that can seem sometimes.

if I was going to be proud of myself for being generous, that I had to do it even when it meant I might lose something.

Astronomy was history. Because space was time. And that was the thing she loved most about the universe itself. When you look at the red star Antares in the southern sky, you are looking over thirty-three hundred trillion miles away. But you are also looking more than five hundred and fifty years into the past. Antares is so far away that its light takes five hundred and fifty years to reach your eye on Earth. Five hundred and fifty light-years away. So when you look out at the sky, the farther you can see, the further back you are looking in time. The space between you and the star is time.

To look up at the nighttime sky is to become a part of a long line of people throughout human history who looked above at that same set of stars. It is to witness time unfolding.

At NASA, we honor the people we have lost by referring to them as being ‘on an eternal mission.’

Bravery is being unafraid of something other people are afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but strong enough to do it anyway.”

The steady hum of the wind drowned out almost everything except the sound of her own voice inside her mind. Which was such a gift. She had always been her greatest friend, her greatest guide.

“The whole sky makes sense to me now,” Vanessa said. “Because of you.”