3200 Phaethon

A Geminid Fireball Streaking Down to Earth.

I'm going to turn dork tonight. The Geminid meteor shower is expected to peak tonight and I hope to catch at glimpse of it. The trick is either to stay awake long enough or set the alarm, and convince myself to abandon the warmth of my bed for the cold, night air at 2 AM. We'll see how my pledge works out.

So, why lose sleep over this? I used to have a hell of a fascination with astronomy since I was about six. My Dad bought my brother the coolest toy back then, a telescope, and it was the first time I saw the mountains on the Moon through it. During some of the nights of July in 1971, my brother and I tried to find Apollo 15 on the surface of the Moon. We thought we spotted them at times. My six year old excitement was easily pricked by the thought of actually seeing the tracks of the Lunar Rover up there. In truth we had no idea where to look and a crappy 10x telescope won't make out any object smaller than fifty miles across.

The Moon, space travel and space itself got me to bug my Dad and Mom with questions neither of those two could fully answer. My curiosity was fired up. Perhaps that's when it all started really, my silly desire to know things hidden from me. My curiosity to this day is insatiable.  The occasional explanation I did get from Dad then was so odd that it really boggled my mind.

“The Moon, Sun and Earth, altogether, controls the tide.” My Dad would say

“But whhyyy?” was this kid's annoying response. I had to know the details. My Dad must've rolled his eyes at times. He was a hell of an accountant but not trained in orbital mechanics at all.

So, I was left on my own really. But luckily I liked to read as a kid and Apollo, Soyuz and the first Space Lab made it safe, even cool to talk about science then. I found books on it all.

I'd had an amateur's astronomy book that helped you pinpoint where to aim a telescope and with some searching, you'd find some star, planet or whatever that was out there. I was surprised to find out that stars were different colors, not that same pollution-colored green light they have when you look at them through the naked eye. There was one find I thought was very cool in that one I found it, and two that the star is red as a ruby, no joke. The star Sirius, which is out tonight, looks like a scintillating diamond through a pair of binoculars. It's that bright and colorful.

This little hobby of mine died off when I was a teen but I remembered how to find your usual targets in the sky still. I once pointed out the Andromeda galaxy to my friend M then and his response was typical of your blue collar/D-D-Davies types that lived in Pawtucket. (D-D-Davies is a local joke, say it fast like a stutter and you'll get the humor).

M says to me as I point out the tiny patch of light in the sky:

“Huh? Who give's a fuck? What's that got to do with life down here? Is it going to make you money?”

No, it wouldn't make me a dime. And to him, it was a waste of mindfulness that could be spent on day to day problems here...on Earth. Andromeda has no effect on his life whatsoever. But to me, to know something bizarre as that existed beyond Pawtucket's borders, was worth thinking about time to time. There was more to this town and its mundane life than scrounging for a used tire to avoid paying Sears full price for one. Again, if you just have $200 total in your bank account, scrounging takes up a good part of your efforts and attention anyway, and wasting time thinking of anything other than survival is going to drag you down.

M had his points and they were good ones. Pay attention to what's right in front of you. Though if taken too far that prevents you from looking beyond any horizon really and screws you out of chances in life. It''ll screw your chances at knowing anything more than “Pawtucket” too.

So, if I can stop yawning and can tolerate lying on the cold December ground in my backyard, I'll be looking up. Looking for strange, off-wordly things that seem a bit more entertaining and uncommon vs. the humdrum of repetitive, Pawtucket life.