Whirled away on a river of light

Originally published 24 February 1997

EXUMA, Bahamas — One recent evening, walk­ing home in the pitch-dark Bahami­an night from drinks at the local bar, we sud­den­ly felt our­selves whirled into infin­i­ty. And it was­n’t the drink.

The Earth curved away under our feet, putting Ori­on high­er in the sky than we were used to see­ing him — 20 degrees high­er than in New England.

Cano­pus lift­ed its light above the hori­zon at Ori­on’s feet. Cano­pus is the sec­ond-bright­est star in the sky, after Sir­ius, but too far south to be vis­i­ble from Boston. Its name has an Egypt­ian con­no­ta­tion; Aswan, in the val­ley of the Nile, has the same lat­i­tude as our island.

We sud­den­ly felt the round­ness of the plan­et, as if we could stand on tip­toe and see the South­ern Cross — the stars of the Aus­tralian flag — wait­ing to rise, just there, over the south­east­ern horizon.

The win­ter Milky Way was a riv­er of light arch­ing from north to south above our heads, pass­ing near Ori­on’s back — the gath­ered bril­liance of the myr­i­ad stars that make up our galaxy, indi­vid­u­al­ly invis­i­ble to the unaid­ed eye. Our sun is two-thirds of the way out from the cen­ter of the pin­wheel galaxy. In win­ter, our view is towards the edge of the pin­wheel, so the riv­er of light is not so lumi­nous as in sum­mer when we face the star-packed center.

The win­ter Milky Way is lost in the lights of Boston. Here it was prominent.

Most extra­or­di­nary of all was a mys­te­ri­ous lobe of light that reached up from the place on the west­ern hori­zon where the sun had set, half way to the zenith. At first we thought we might be see­ing the lights of the air­port, until we real­ized that our tiny air­port could nev­er make such a far-reach­ing glow.

We were see­ing the zodi­a­cal light, brighter than I ever remem­ber see­ing it before.

The zodi­a­cal light is caused by sun­light reflect­ing from mete­oric dust that orbits the sun in the plane of the solar sys­tem, rem­nants of the vast neb­u­la of dust and gas out of which the solar sys­tem was born more than four bil­lion years ago. Like the plan­ets, this dif­fuse stream of par­ti­cles reflects light, although faint­ly and rarely seen.

Moon­less nights of Feb­ru­ary are the best time to see the zodi­a­cal light, and nowhere bet­ter than here, on the Trop­ic of Can­cer, where the plane of the solar sys­tem is tipped so as to pass direct­ly through our zenith, lift­ing the band of faint light up and away from the horizon.

And so we were treat­ed to the spec­ta­cle of two inter­sect­ing rivers of lights, the light of two great whirling disks, the solar sys­tem and the galaxy.

The solar sys­tem is tipped on its side with­in the greater disk of the galaxy, so the two rivers of light inter­sect more or less at right angles. The axis of the Earth is tipped with­in the solar sys­tem, and our bod­ies were tipped with respect to the axis of the Earth. We strug­gled to ori­ent our­selves to these many cock­eyed angles.

In the 20 min­utes we stood gap­ing at the light-streaked sky, the spin­ning Earth car­ried us 350 miles to the east. The flight of the Earth around the sun whirled us 22,000 miles through the space of the solar sys­tem. The turn­ing galaxy bore us 200,000 miles through the cos­mic abyss.

We felt like the prophet Ezekiel, who saw in the heav­ens inter­sect­ing wheels turn­ing upon wheels, sparkling like chrysolite.

It was enough to cause vertigo.

Do they mat­ter, these moments of sin­gu­lar insight into deep space and deep time, these gifts of grace that come unbid­den — the curv­ing Earth, the arch­ing lumi­nous planes of solar sys­tem and galaxy?

John Calvin, stern father of the Ref­or­ma­tion, wrote in 1559, not long after Coper­ni­cus sent the Earth careen­ing around the sun, “…the pow­ers of the soul are far from being con­fined to func­tions that serve the body. Of what con­cern is it to the body that you mea­sure the heav­ens, gath­er the num­bers of the stars, deter­mine the mag­ni­tude of each, know the space that lies between them, with what swift­ness or slow­ness they com­plete their cours­es, how many degrees this way or that they decline?”

There are activ­i­ties of the soul that have no prac­ti­cal use, sug­gests Calvin. Mea­sur­ing the heav­ens will not put a Porsche in the dri­ve­way, or an Olympic-sized pool in the back­yard. On the first day of my astron­o­my class­es I tell my stu­dents, “This course will not help you make a buck.” Few stu­dents run for the door. What draws them to astron­o­my is not greed, but a long­ing of the soul to know its place in the universe.

In the 20 min­utes that we stood under the stars, we made a flight of more than half-a-mil­lion miles across the cos­mos, whirled upon cir­cles with­in cir­cles. We were star-trav­el­ers, trekkers of infin­i­ty, Ezekiel meets Mr. Spock.

Noth­ing prac­ti­cal, noth­ing that will help pay the bills. Just a long inter­val of rap­tur­ous con­tem­pla­tion of the objects of the soul’s longing.