Starlight on Sherkin

Made it back from Sherkin on Saturday night, before the weather picked up in earnest. Force 9 gales...

Great evening: fun ferry crossings, fantastic quiz, lovely pub, great craic. The raffle had the coolest prizes ever, including a beautiful lobster pot which frankly, I flat-out coveted. A rare enough thing for me, but there you have it.

But my favourite part of the evening was the walk from the pier to the Jolly Roger. Walking in darkness along the island road (without street lights), the moon strong enough to cast a shadow, and a universe of stars overhead. Perfect conditions for stargazing: Ursa minor, Canis minor, Orion - super-clear in all of his belted glory. I'm very slooooowly getting the hang of constellations: my current learn-to-recognise is Monocerus (who wouldn't want to discover unicorney things; seriously you could have the Unicorn Budget Approach and I'd probably take an interest...).

Anyhoo, gazing up at Monocerus on Sherkin, I thought of the Hubble's feature on one of its stars - monocerotis. It was a run-of-the-mill star until January 2002, when it suddenly flashed to 4000 times its normal brightness. And for a short time, it was the most brilliant star in the Milky Way. The flash faded, but as its light travelled through space, it highlighted the swirling layers of gas & dust that we normally don't see. They call it a light echo.


And where else was that light-echoey thought going to lead, but to Louis MacNeice's Star-gazer:

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one else
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry night
And the westward train was empty and had no corridors
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight
Of those intolerably bright
Holes, punched in the sky, which excited me partly because
Of their Latin names and partly because I had read in the textbooks
How very far off they were, it seemed their light
Had left them (some at least) long years before I was.

And this remembering now I mark that what
Light was leaving some of them at least then,
Forty-two years ago, will never arrive
In time for me to catch it, which light when
It does get here may find that there is not
Anyone left alive
To run from side to side in a late night train
Admiring it and adding noughts in vain.

So there I was, gazing up in the darkness, smiling at the beauty of the words '...adding noughts in vain'.