JUPITER RISING

There was a bright light in the sky last night, a beautiful, dazzling thing, sparkling in the darkness, just above the hills.

At about 9.00 PM you’d have found me all fatigued from my day and yawning, ready to give up on Tuesday and stagger up to bed for an early night, when I glanced through the window and spotted it, out there, just above the treetops, gleaming in the East, calling to me.

There’s something about these crisp Autumn nights when the skies are clear that is magical. You know there’ll be ice on the car when you get up in the morning, but the celestial display that you get to see more than makes up for any dark mutterings when you scrape the glass. Those bright little pinpricks of light from so far away in space and time that speak of a vast old universe beyond the clouds of which we are just the tiniest of parts.

I stared at it for a while and wondered what it was. I thought it might be Venus, because it usually is, but I didn’t know so I went upstairs to do a quick search on the ever useful – if occasionally misleading – internet and it turned out it was most probably Jupiter.

Ah, Jupiter! The great gas giant. The biggest object in the solar system after the sun, the planet which could swallow all the other planets whole  twice over and still have room for dessert. That delightful, unknowable cosmic bauble with its beautiful striped clouds and the great red spot that seems to be an ongoing storm that might well have been going on throughout all recorded human history and could possibly outlast humanity altogether, depending on which theory you choose. We might think it rains a lot down here, but to contemplate a storm continuing that long is almost beyond our imagination. “By Jove!” Victorian adventurers might have exclaimed at that thought, or maybe even “By Jupiter!” and rightly so, because it’s one impressive spectacle. I, for one, was quite excited that it might well be Jupiter that I was staring at. For the Romans, Jupiter was very important. Jupiter was the king of all their Gods, as well as being the God of the sky and the God of thunder. Big stuff for a big planet. The novelist Arthur C. Clarke seemed particularly inspired by Jupiter, and seemed to think it had special significance for all our futures. In “2001” it’s to Jupiter that we were heading thanks to our cosmic guides, and in the (suddenly feeling very appropriately named) sequel “2010”, the planet takes on a new significance in the affairs of humankind. In the end, he proclaimed “All these worlds are yours…” declaring his hope that we might one day get to visit some of them. Let’s hope, if we do, that we learn to look after them. They are a heck of a long way to go just to drop some litter in the car park and head off home again.

I hope it was Jupiter, but even if it wasn't, it doesn't really matter. It was still something beautiful to look at and think about. I wish I knew more about astronomy. Over the years I’ve bought the books and read through them, and I can even pick out one or two of the more recognisable constellations, but generally that’s about it. I’ll watch “The Sky at Night” if I happen to notice it’s on, and I’ll get terribly excited about the things that it might be possible to see in the coming month, and then promptly forget all about them. Maybe it has something to do with the almost permanent cloud cover we seem to get around here which is why those extra special clear nights seem to very precious when the stars come out and play. On my wall I have this rather lovely star chart which is truly a thing of beauty although I’ve never quite got around to actually fathoming what it is it’s actually telling me. The months are shown around the perimeter but I’m never quite sure what direction that means I’m supposed to look in. I suppose it must be north, towards the pole star, but there’s a great big hill in the way, but if I look south, the map doesn’t make much sense. One day, I keep promising myself I’ll sit down and work it out, but I’m starting to think I never will.

So last night, after a while I went upstairs and got out the silly little telescope that I picked up cheaply in a supermarket last year. I got it to train on the bird feeders in the garden and it’s fine for that, but the glory of Jupiter was beyond its feeble limitations. Then I got the binoculars we’ve got for bird watching and they were much better but I couldn’t keep my hands steady enough for a proper viewing. After that I thought it might be quite nice to have a photograph of Jupiter (or whatever it was) and went to get the camera. Sadly, all my efforts were very poor as the equipment I have isn’t really fit for that particular purpose, but it was worth a try. Eventually I decided to just sit there and look at it for a while and something like that really makes you appreciate the magnificence of the humble human eye. Of course, all I could see was that magnificent bright dot, but after a few seconds the whole of the night sky became clear and there were stars everywhere on a beautiful night in a usually pretty damp and miserable month at the back end of the year.

I sometimes think we tend to take the night sky for granted and sometimes we just forget to look up, but when we get the chance to, it’s a breathtaking thing to see, and humbling in a way when you start to contemplate our tiny place in the infinite. It tends to help to put a lot of things in proportion and sometimes it will make me despair at the troubles we cause on our lonely little planet as it spins along its celestial path as a bright blue dot in an endless dark. Why do waste our time on our petty idiocies? Above our heads, way up there is an infinity of beauty, spinning and weaving in an eternal dance that we ought to feel it is a privilege and a joy to be part of. We should be looking at the stars and instead we wallow in the gutter.

This morning I got up and right in front of the house in the still darkened sky was the constellation of Orion. Clear as crystal and as vivid and vibrant as could be.  If you get the chance, sometime soon, just take a moment and look at the stars. You might be surprised all over again at the beauty of it all. You never know, you might even find something of yourself up there. After all, we are all made of stardust.