Not a huge number, but you had to be there. The bowl of the heavens, at Big Meadow, shone everywhere – not just in white clusters overhead, but along the tree and hill line. An eerie little breeze deepened the darkness as UD groped the ground for her binoculars and – when it grew chilly – her sweater.
Chilly – she thought of hellish, thunderish, DC while she lay back, somewhat shivering, in her beach chair.
The barred owls hoot all night here, a cosmic chorale. Last evening a distant storm made bright flashes across the field. We talked about lightyears of distance (one lightyear = about six trillion miles) and parsecs and made obvious remarks about our incapacity to grasp astronomical realities. Also, though, about how remarkably much we know (Mr UD reads a lot of astronomy/physics) about the massive black canvas. Galactic Hubble images came to me as I scanned the stars.