The first inklings of my passion for the night sky came to me, as it did for many others, on July 20, 1969 as the world seemed to stop when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon. As an 11 year-old I was spellbound, trying to reconcile the science of what I was seeing with my very own eyes with the science fiction of the day. Innocent enough to still wonder “What if they do encounter life on the moon?”
I sat transfixed in front of our old 19” b&w television in my bedroom in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. If I remember correctly, it was quite late at night that this momentous event occurred and I had to get special dispensation to stay up so late. A year or so before, my mother had given me her old Brownie camera to use. I pulled it out that night and took a picture of the TV screen even as my mother admonished that it would never turn out. As nothing was instant back then, I waited impatiently for my prints to return from the drugstore developer. Finally there it was. Grainy, overexposed from the bright TV screen, but unmistakably Neil Armstrong holding onto the ladder of the lunar module. 57 years later I still have that photo – now digitalized on my computer.
That photo doesn’t just represent a giant leap for mankind, but also as the jumping off point for my lifelong interest in the night sky and for photography. I declared after the moon landing that I was going to become a space scientist. Well, that title never made it onto my resume but school librarian did. A career filled with trying to instill wonder into the minds and hearts of middle schoolers. After a night out chasing the Aurora or a full moon rising, you would find me at the front of the class with the smart board fired up with my photos. I would read about all things space, constellations I had imaged, myths of the night sky, and we would watch videos of Col Chris Hadfield amazing us with his educational videos from the ISS. I formed a small astro club and took students out to view the night sky with a telescope during earth hour in 2019 and were serendipitously treated to a passover from the ISS and a brief appearance of the Aurora Borealis.
It is a rare time that I do not look out at the night sky before heading off to bed. If the sky is cloudless, regardless of the time of year or chill in the air, I step out onto my deck and take a deep breath. Summer nights can find me lying in a gravity chair basking in star light. When Lady Aurora is dancing, the camera comes out. When the stars are particularly bright, the camera comes out. When the moon is looking particularly coquettish behind an interesting cloud, skimming along a rooftop,or hiding behind trees, the camera comes out. Who am I kidding, a camera is never not at hand. When the Northern Lights are a mere whisper on the horizon, the camera gear is readied for the dance that may (or just as often) may not appear. When there is a chance there is a comet getting close enough to see, I consider that a gauntlet laid before me and I pick up the challenge of discovering it for myself in the wealth of pinpoint lights across the heavens. Pointing, shooting, hoping. Then rushing home to the computer to scan the photos for the signs. Then rushing back out once I have ascertained its position and narrowing my focus until there it is, centre of frame. The telescope then comes out for an even better view.
The moon never disappoints. I never see the moon without saying “Hello Moon”. I await the tiny crescent as eagerly as the full. The moon looks the same in all its phases every month. But…watch it slide down a telephone wire, or balance on the neighbors roof and it takes on a rather playful personality. Watching it as she rises mysteriously from behind a stand of trees or over the lake. As a Maritimer at heart, I see moon barnacles rather than craters. Earthshine is Magic. A reminder that no matter what phase we are in, we are still whole. The moon can be seen from anywhere on earth so when we are parted, we can look up where we are and look at the same moon and not feel quite so far apart after all.
Decades have passed since watching the first man walk on the moon. Eclipses have come and gone – both Lunar and Solar (I happily witnessed the one Carly Simon made famous in 1972). Many meteor showers have been watched and wished upon, full moons have risen, Orion has rose and set with the seasons, the constant of the Big Dipper above us, Cassiopeia pointing the way to Andromeda, comets coming and going, the ISS drifting as a white dot over my house (always marveling that there are humans living on that white dot and always giving a wave…just in case).
From a small 19” B&W TV and a week to see developed film, I now have access to a wide range of APPS for help locate objects in the night sky, to tell me exactly when the moon will rise or set, and a digital camera to give me instant gratification (or disappointment). I have a SeeStar50 telescope that can image the night sky operated by my phone. I type in what I want it to look at and there it is…stacking and developing images in front of my eyes. I wouldn’t even begin to be able to explain all of this to my 11-year-old self. And I thought there was wonder before!
Fifty-seven years later and I am still as full of wonder. I have been glued to my TV once again to see humans go further into space than ever before. I proudly watched fellow Canadian Jeremy Hansen and his equally amazing cohorts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch share their adventure from a tiny capsule. I registered to have my name placed on an SD card that went into space with them (encased in the Zero Gravity Indicator stuffy “Rise” and received a boarding pass that, I will not lie, tickled me just as much if not more than if I were still that 11 year-old.
It was a day off when the crew reached the furthest point in their travels. I started watching on the TV and took another photo using my phone as they reached their milestone. I had put off the task of scanning and digitizing old photographs until I realized, hey, I could be watching it in the background of my Mac whilst scanning and digitizing. And I did. On the day they were to splash down I kept an eye on proceedings from my work desk, thankful for two screens. Then locked the doors to the studio and rushed off home to have supper on a TV tray in front of a 65” TV to watch the splashdown (ooh, my 11 year old self would have loved that!). I don’t think I took a deep breath for a very long time. My eyes were glued to the capsule…waiting impatiently for the crew to emerge. Mission accomplished. I was screenshotting from the YouTube live stream from my phone rather than pointing the phone at the TV screen. Never before had the juxtaposition of technology ever been so abundantly clear.
Screenshots from across the mission taking during NASA’s live footage on YouTube and from my office desk. A far cry from my original moon landing photo.
This has been an extraordinary 10 days, not just for the advancement of space travel but for the reflection of the decades passed. I think that at any point in the proceedings, had I looked in the mirror I would have been genuinely shocked to see an almost 68 year old woman looking back, because that 11 year-old was still there watching it all.
Wonder never grows old…
Retirement and The Chase of the Lady Aurora 