Cosmically Conflicted

When the reach of our mind exceeds the grasp of our will

Screen capture of Jupiter and its moons visible at 4:00AM on 16 July, 2021 from Floyd VA.

SPOILER/tldr: Just watch this. Never mind the word salad that follows. I know you’re busy and have places to be.

I have, by now, accumulated a long (two month) history of telescopic half-steps that frustrate my observation of all but the nearest celestial objects. Wind, fog, pollen, cloudy skies and dewy condensation bedevil me, over and above more technical temporary glitches and orthopedic impediments.

I may someday tell that whole story of victory and defeat to myself here after I have had at last that first night of GPS-guided star touring and wail out a joyous YIPP! into the night of the Greater Tuggles Gap metro-area.

Last night, after another cussing of the red-dot finder scope and failing to train the big lens even on the brightest object in visible space—Jupiter—I brought my grumbling self inside defeated, fetched another cup of coffee, and slumped into my comfy ergo-chair behind the computer with fingers poised over the keyboard and no particular place to go.

As fate and residual attention-awareness would have it, my idle keystrokes while browsing the news carried me to—of all places—Jupiter. If you have been paying attention to space events (and I have discovered not many of my acquaintances to so) you are aware of the recent Juno fly-by of Jupiter, and especially its largest moon, Ganymede.

🪐 And this was the poignant moment of the entire day for me, consisting of two juxtaposed views of our near and far world:

First, in one of—if not THE most moving visions of distant planets ever seen (same link as up top), Juno’s cameras come within 600 some-odd miles of the giant moon Ganymede, showing spectacular detail of a mysterious past that has left it scarred and healed and scarred again. From there, with music by Vangelis guiding the mind, the eye tracks across the comic-book colors of Jupiter’s variegated surface of morphing gases, like paints mixing while lightning flashes.

Perhaps it was just the right moment for this to reach me at a deep, deep place—bringing me almost to tears: the beauty; the reach of human genius and persistence and will to know, in tragic counterpoint to..

The second piece of the morning’s take home: The agonizing images coming from flooding and fires in numerous places around the world—Germany, China, California—where there is evidence of humanity’s lesser nature, guided by greed and fear and ignorance, pressing the accelerator to the floor, cooking our thin, fragile atmosphere and pushing the planet inextricably into the danger zone.

Look at all we’ve done to discover and learn, know and understand, create and share by the tools science and inquiring minds have given birth to in our short history. Then look at how, in that same span of three hundred years, we’ve failed to restrain ourselves from knowingly turning nature into profit and heat, no matter what the consequences.

There is agony in holding both of these realities side by side, and yet, here we are. Where do we go from here?

---

And so, after that jolting mashup of the horrendous and the marvelous, I decided I’d go back out in the still-dark and give that cussed finder scope one more try, no matter what contortions it required. And I saw Ganymede and three other moons of Jupiter pretty much as they appear in this screenshot above from that moment via Stellarium.

Serving Suggestion: share the Ganymede flyby video with a young person. Inspire them to reach for the stars, with a clear understanding of what it’s going to take for their children to see the same cosmic spectacles, two generations hence.