Latest / Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder / Sad Astronomy: Reflections on Distance, Death, and Meaning

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Sad Astronomy: Reflections on Distance, Death, and Meaning · Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder

0:07
Howdy Star Gazers and welcome to this episode
0:11
of Star Trails. My name is Drew and I'll be your
0:14
guide to the night sky for the week of November
0:17
the 16th through the 22nd. This week the moon
0:21
leaves us for a few nights, revealing deep sky
0:24
objects and clearing the way for dual meteor
0:27
showers. We'll check in on Interstellar Object
0:31
3i, and hopefully you caught the Northern Lights
0:35
last week. Later in the show, we'll take a detour
0:39
into something a little different. Something
0:41
that's been on my mind lately. That feeling that
0:45
creeps in when you look at the night sky and
0:47
wrestle with its scale. Some people call it sad
0:51
astronomy. It's about the loneliness of deep
0:55
space, the weight of old light, and the knowledge
0:58
that everything must one day come to an end.
1:03
Whether you're joining us from the backyard,
1:05
the balcony, or just your imagination, I'm glad
1:08
you're here. So grab a comfortable spot and let's
1:11
get started. Before we get into the episode,
1:15
we need to talk about the Northern Lights, because
1:18
last week the Sun was once again putting on a
1:21
show. If you were like me, you were glued to
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social media feeds watching folks post images
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of last Tuesday's low -latitude aurora. It wasn't
1:32
quite as dramatic as the outburst last spring,
1:35
at least not in my neck of the woods. All the
1:38
images I saw locally were mostly just a red sky
1:41
glow, those higher altitude aurora that I find
1:45
particularly vexing to see. Owing to both my
1:48
own red -green color blindness and the way our
1:52
eyes work, color is hard to see in dim conditions.
1:56
That's why your camera can often see aurora better
1:59
than our eyes can. I didn't try to photograph
2:03
it myself, but I enjoyed seeing everyone else's
2:06
efforts. Another coronal mass ejection blasted
2:10
Earth the following day, Wednesday, and initial
2:13
reports said we'd get aurora even farther south.
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By the time nightfall arrived, the prediction
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had shifted and, as far as I know, there were
2:22
no northern lights down south on that day. Too
2:26
bad, because I had my camera and tripod loaded
2:29
up in a road trip to a dark site planned. If
2:32
some of you caught photos of the light show,
2:35
visit starrtrails .show and use the contact form
2:39
there to let me know what you saw. I'd love to
2:42
see what it looked like in your backyard. If
2:52
you've been following any space news lately,
2:54
you may have already heard that the excitement
2:57
over interstellar object 3I Atlas may be coming
3:01
to an end, as it looks like the object has broken
3:04
up during its close approach to the Sun. 3I Atlas
3:08
is only the third confirmed interstellar object
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to drift through our solar system, following
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Oumuamua, that's one eye, and Comet Borisov,
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two eye. What makes ATLAS intriguing is that
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unlike Oumuamua's enigmatic pancake or cigar
3:26
-like geometry, ATLAS presented as more of a
3:30
conventional comet, a nucleus with a modest coma.
3:34
Over the last several weeks, astronomers have
3:37
reported asymmetric brightening, a diffuse tail
3:40
inconsistent with a single intact nucleus, and
3:44
a slight shift in the object's photometric center.
3:47
all of which hint that Atlas might be breaking
3:50
up, shedding fragments as it approaches perihelion.
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Interstellar comets have hard lives. They spend
3:58
millions of years adrift in space where the volatile
4:01
ices that hold them together become fragile,
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desiccated, and riddled with microfractures.
4:08
When such an object suddenly gets slammed with
4:11
the full solar onslaught, heating tidal forces,
4:15
and radiation, those ancient weaknesses can give
4:18
way. If Atlas is fragmenting, it's probably because
4:23
sunlight is turning its interior gases back into
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pressure, popping it apart like a cosmic blister.
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Observatories tracking it have suggested either
4:34
multiple small fragments or a single nucleus
4:36
that's beginning to shed material in uneven spurts,
4:40
which creates that ghostly broadened tail. Break
4:45
up or not, Atlas is writing its autobiography
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in real time, and we get to read it. Fragmenting
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comets reveal their internal structure, the density,
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the layering, the mix of ice and dust, better
4:57
than any intact pass ever could. And in Atlas's
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case, everything we learn is a direct sample
5:05
of another star system. Even if Atlas dies on
5:08
approach, the disintegration itself becomes the
5:11
science. The sky is a polite guest this week.
5:23
No lunar glare, no drama, just clean darkness
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for deep sky enthusiasts and astrophotographers.
5:31
We're sitting in a sweet spot on the lunar calendar.
5:34
The moon is fading into a waning crescent tonight,
5:37
shrinking each morning, and it's a new moon by
5:40
the 20th. That means we get a midweek window
5:43
of truly dark skies, the kind of darkness that
5:46
makes the dim stuff pop. By the 22nd, there's
5:50
the barest sliver of a waxing crescent after
5:53
sunset, but it's too low and too subtle to wash
5:57
anything out. The planets are arranged in a neat
6:00
little lineup this week. Saturn hangs in the
6:03
southwest after sunset, mellow, steady, and easy
6:07
to pick out. Jupiter rises earlier each night
6:10
and dominates the late evening sky, bright enough
6:14
to stop you in your tracks. And very early in
6:17
the morning, especially by the 21st and 22nd,
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Mercury begins its climb into the pre -dawn sky.
6:24
It's low, it's fleeting, and the horizon needs
6:28
to be clear, but it's there. Venus is technically
6:31
in the dawn too, but so low and faint this month
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that it's not worth chasing. With the moon out
6:38
of the way, the constellations take center stage.
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Cassiopeia is high in the northeast. And right
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below it sits Perseus, carrying the gorgeous
6:48
double cluster, a binocular object that is always
6:52
a crowd pleaser. And in the east, the winter
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stars Capella, Aldebaran, and the first hints
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of Orion's belt are beginning to claim the late
7:02
night sky. Every night of November is an inch
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closer to full wintertime brilliance. Now for
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the really fun stuff, meteor activity. We're
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nearing the peaks of two November showers, and
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both benefit from the new moon darkness. First
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are the Leonids, famous for their historic storms,
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though this year they're modest, maybe a handful
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per hour. They leave fast, bright streaks, and
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with the moon gone, they stand out beautifully.
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The Leonids peak around the 17th and 18th, so
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the early part of the week is the best time to
7:38
catch them. Then, later in the week, the Alpha
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monoceratids get a brief mention. They're normally
7:45
minor, but they're unpredictable, and every so
7:48
often they produce a sudden spike of activity.
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With the dark skies, it should be easy to catch
7:54
a meteor or two, leaving a quick autograph across
7:57
the sky. Coming up, does the night sky make you
8:02
sad? Do you find yourself questioning your own
8:05
existence as you ponder the scale of the universe?
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Does the eventual heat death of the cosmos make
8:12
you uneasy? If so, you're not alone. This is
8:16
the realm of sad astronomy, and it's a real phenomenon.
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After the break, we're going to have a cosmic
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meditation of sorts on distance, on loss, on
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why we look up even when the universe doesn't
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look back. Think of it as a melancholy stretch
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of road between curiosity and hard science. It
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sounds cold, but a promise will end in a warm
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place. I'll take you there after the break. Stay
8:46
with us. Welcome back. Astronomy is often described
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as a science of wonder, stars, nebula, the promise
9:09
of distant worlds. But behind that wonder, there's
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another feeling, harder to name. It's the silence
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after the signal fades. It's the awareness that
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most of what we see is already gone. That's sad
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astronomy. It's the emotional gravity that comes
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from realizing how brief we are. and how magnificent
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the universe remains without us. Sad astronomy
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isn't hopeless, it's honest, and honesty, like
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starlight, travels a long way. Astronomy may
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very well be the study of everything that's already
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gone. Every photon we catch in our telescopes
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left its home before any of us were born. Some
10:02
of those stars don't even exist anymore. Space
10:06
isn't so much a place as it's a memory stretched
10:09
across time. For the past few episodes, we've
10:15
been knee -deep in data, models, probabilities,
10:19
and even quantum computing. Tonight, I just want
10:23
to step back and look at what all of it means,
10:26
even if the beauty hurts a little. Some of you
10:30
may recall we didn't have any episodes back in
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September. Part of that was simply the slings
10:36
and arrows of life, but it was mostly because
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I had to take some weeks to reflect on my own
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tiny place in the universe, having just reached
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that gloomy age of 50. I'm sure you've noticed
10:50
our topics lately have been a little meta, these
10:53
large -scale ideas about our own existence. You
10:57
could argue this podcast has been in sad astronomy
11:00
mode now for the past few weeks. I'd never even
11:05
heard the term sad astronomy until recently,
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but it's real. It's generally the study of how
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things end, the deaths of stars, galaxies, and
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the universe itself. But it also deals with how
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we feel when we look up at night. The vastness
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that makes us feel alone and tiny. The isolation
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we experience as specialists in a hobby where
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we often find ourselves physically alone, under
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a dark sky in the cold, chasing meaning and truth
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through the chromatic aberrations of eyepieces,
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fogging lenses, and slightly misaligned mirrors.
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Many, many people experience sadness in astronomy.
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Just searching for the term sad astronomy reveals
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endless forums and websites where observers wonder
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why space makes them feel dread and despair.
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So in this episode, I want to share a kind of
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essay told in five parts. Five brief reflections
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about distance, death, and endurance. and each
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one is a different way of hearing the universe's
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song. A telescope is essentially a time machine.
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When we look outward, we look backward. the light
12:40
from Andromeda began its journey two and a half
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million years ago, long before the first humans
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carved symbols in stone. Even the light from
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our sun is eight minutes old, a gentle delay
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between cause and effect, presence and memory.
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Astronomy is the only science where the past
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never stops arriving, and the deeper we peer,
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the lonelier it becomes. The cosmos is expanding,
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galaxies are slipping away beyond reach. Someday,
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the universe will outgrow our ability to see
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it. What will we do when the sky goes dark, not
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from clouds, but from time itself? Light has
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a speed limit, and beyond that line, there's
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only silence. Science fiction has tried to translate
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that silence for us. In the film Contact, Jodie
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Foster listens for a signal, not just from aliens,
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but from meaning itself. In Interstellar, Matthew
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McConaughey crosses the galaxy chasing love and
13:48
time, and Anne Hathaway's character, in a monologue
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I once found very cringey, insists that love
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is the one thing that transcends dimensions.
14:03
yet understand maybe it's some evidence some
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Artifact of a higher dimension that we can't
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consciously perceive Love is the one thing we're
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capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions
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of time and space Carl Sagan said it better for
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small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable
14:28
only through love Not as a force of nature, but
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as a human survival instinct. We invent connections
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to make the infinite feel habitable. These films
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are meditations on cosmic loneliness wrapped
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in the search for meaning. And those aren't the
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only ones. There's Solaris, the prototype for
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cosmic loneliness. Of course, 2001, A Space Odyssey.
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existential, indifferent, and yet simultaneously
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glorifying the evolution of man as he takes his
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first baby steps into deep space. And add Astra,
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which tells us the further out we journey, the
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more alone we are. A nebula is a graveyard that
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glows. It's the ashes of a star, still burning
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with borrowed light. Every atom of carbon in
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our bodies was made in one of those funerals.
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We are literally the residue of dying suns. When
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I look through my telescope or photograph something
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like the Crab Nebula, I'm watching the aftermath
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of a death that happened before there were pyramids.
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The light just took this long to reach us. Sad
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astronomy means standing in that afterglow, seeing
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beauty born from catastrophe, and realizing that's
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also what it means to be alive. Eventually, no
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new stars will form, the universe will suffer
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heat death, and all warmth and structure will
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fade. Right now, 99 .9 % of the universe is actually
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empty. And light's speed limit means even if
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we could travel that fast, that 1 % will be largely
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unreachable. We've always answered the universe's
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silence with noise. In 1974, we sent the Arecibo
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message toward a distant star cluster, a digital
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portrait of who we are, transmitted once, never
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to be repeated. Two spacecraft, Voyagers 1 and
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2, carry golden records with the sound of Earth,
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thunder, birds, Beethoven, and a human heartbeat.
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They've now left the solar system, still whispering
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faint radio signals back home. Chances are, they'll
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outlive every city we've built. Someday, some
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distant traveler, or perhaps no one, may find
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them. We send these messages not because we expect
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an answer, but because silence is unbearable.
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Even Opportunity, the Mars rover, left us a kind
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of message. My battery is low, and it's getting
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dark. That line wasn't in its code. It was in
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ours We made it poetic because we couldn't stand
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the idea of something we built Dying alone on
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a faraway planet Part four entropy and memory
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Entropy is the universe's tendency toward disorder
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But that phrase doesn't quite capture the scale
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of it. Entropy is the quiet drift of every system
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from stars to spacecraft toward breakdown. Heat
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spreads out, metal fatigues, orbits decay, temperature
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differences flatten out until everything reaches
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the same cold final equilibrium. It's inevitability.
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A star cools, a planet, like Mars for instance,
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loses its atmosphere. Entropy is the cost of
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structure in a universe that prefers smoothness
18:51
over complexity. It's the universe's quiet metronome.
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It ticks in the cooling of stars, the fading
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of orbits, and the corrosion of mirrors and old
19:02
observatories. Even Arecibo's great dish, once
19:07
the ear of our planet, lies broken in the jungle
19:10
now, listening to nothing. Space exploration,
19:14
while not astronomy per se, must conform to entropy.
19:19
Where were you and Challenger exploded after
19:21
liftoff in 1986? I was in the fifth grade, and
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that tragedy was a touchstone for my generation.
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I remember seeing the shuttle Columbia on its
19:32
first launch in 1981 when I was in preschool.
19:36
Twenty years later, as a journalist, I wrote
19:39
about its destruction over Texas. And I hesitate
19:43
to even mention Leica, the dog sent into space
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by the Soviets in 1957. Her one -way trip into
19:51
orbit is just too sad for a retelling. Yet, it's
19:55
entropy at work. Without decay, there would be
20:02
no change, no color, no sound. Every photograph
20:07
I take is a small rebellion against that, a way
20:10
of saying this existed once. But without death,
20:14
there's no light. We can't stop the universe
20:18
from unraveling, but we can mark the pattern
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in its threads. Part five the warm horizon Not
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every ending is tragic light still travels the
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photons that left a star a billion years ago
20:42
have finally arrived to meet your eye your camera
20:45
and your curiosity Astronauts talk about something
20:50
called the overview effect that moment when you
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see Earth floating in the black. Not on a screen,
20:57
not through a photograph, but with your own eyes.
21:00
From orbit, borders disappear, conflicts shrink,
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the noise of daily life drops away, and all that's
21:08
left is a thin, trembling line of atmosphere,
21:11
keeping every one of us alive. Many astronauts
21:15
describe an unexpected wave of emotion, grief,
21:19
awe, protectiveness, A kind of fierce tenderness
21:22
for a world they never realized was so fragile.
21:26
Some say it rewired them forever. Seeing Earth
21:29
from that distance didn't make them feel small.
21:33
It made them feel connected. The overview effect
21:37
is the counterpoint to sad astronomy. While most
21:40
of us won't be venturing into space anytime soon,
21:43
we can gaze at the pale blue dot photo. Voyagers
21:47
last look back at Earth. Smaller than a pixel,
21:50
suspended in a sunbeam. All of human experience
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compressed into an inconsequential dot floating
21:58
in a void. Maybe sad astronomy isn't really sad.
22:03
Maybe it's gratitude stretched across the dark.
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Because every time we look up, we become part
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of the same equation that made the stars. We're
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not outside the story. We are the story. And
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perhaps that's what movies like Contact and Interstellar
22:21
were trying to tell us. That even when the cosmos
22:24
is indifferent, connection gives it meaning.
22:28
Love, curiosity, memory, these aren't cosmic
22:32
forces, they're human ones. In a universe that
22:36
forgets, we remember. And that's our small rebellion.
22:55
If you found this episode interesting, please
22:58
share it with a friend who might enjoy it. The
23:00
easiest way to do that is by sending folks to
23:03
our website, StarTrails .Show. And if you want
23:07
to support the show, use the link on the site
23:09
to buy me a coffee. It really helps. Be sure
23:13
to follow Star Trails on Blue Sky and YouTube.
23:16
Links are in the show notes. Until we meet again
23:19
beneath the stars, clear skies, everyone.