I remember a moonless summer night at a campsite in North Dakota, almost forty years ago now, when the stars were so innumerable and bright, it was difficult to pick out the familiar constellations. The night was so black that I could barely see my own hand in front of my face, but the stars hung so thick and low I thought I could reach out and pluck them from the firmament like bunches of grapes. Billions of stars. It was, in an older and truer sense of an abused and overused word, awesome.
My late father loved astronomy. He knew a great many constellations and most of the names of the brightest stars. I remember on dark nights at home in the Midwest, he would point them out. Straight above us there were Vega, Altair, and Deneb. They make up the Summer Triangle. There was Cassiopeia. And the Corona Borealis. Over there, in the South, was Scorpio with the great red giant, Antares. As autumn comes on, Scorpio will sink below the horizon, and Orion will rise; the great hunter chasing a quarry he will never catch.
He taught me that our eyes see color best in the center
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