Moonwatching

The sky is a cheap show, if you pay attention, and often a pretty good one. Yesterday around dusk I was talking to a neighbor out in the alley and scanning the skies, because the day before I'd seen Jupiter with my naked eye in the daytime. And sure enough, there it was, a pinprick of bright light about 10 degrees left of the moon.

I wasn't able to get both the moon and Jupiter in the camera frame, but with a 6x telephoto I got recently I was able to get a pretty fair image of the moon itself. There's just something about the night sky—the moon, planets, stars, all that. Like islands in a sea so wide and deep your mind can't comprehend it. Even this curmudgeonly agnostic can feel a sense of wonder and awe at that. And I feel a strange sense of peace, too, the way people feel calmer at the beach. But beach houses cost gobs of money. I can walk out into my alley for free, any time I want.