It's Sirius

Three of my students attend live at the elite boarding school in town where their parents are faculty. This is the same school where I scored front row seats to see Sweet Honey in the Rock. Seeing as we are studying the Solar System, I kindly invited ourselves to view the night sky through their high powered domed telescopes. To be fair, their astronomy professor invited us. I feel only mildly exploitative of my privileged students.

So this evening after sundown, bundled in snow pants and balaclavas, in a 20 degree windless clear night, a handful of families hiked up to their observatory to see what could be seen. Through one telescope we viewed the pin prick moons around Jupiter, just as Galileo saw them. Through another we made out the polar ice cap of Mars. Another showed the nebula in Orion's belt. The last reached far across the relative emptiness of space to our closest galactic neighbor, Andromeda.

For a brief moment space was real. It existed as a context for our own existence. Not even Google Earth can do that. Sadly, the only students from my class who showed up are the ones who live at the elite private institution. Tomorrow I will struggle to produce the same effect with only Google Earth as my aid.