8 Fall 2017 Applegater
THE STARRY SIDE
We are landscapes!
BY GREELEY WELLS
I had an interesting insight one
morning in the shower. Rubbing away
at my eyebrows with the washcloth, I
remembered there is a particular creature
that lives in human eyebrows called a
follicle mite. I thought, what are they doing
now? Probably holding on for dear life as
I scrub away at their home! And what do
they do at night when I’m sleeping and
they’re free to walk about easily?
It suddenly occurred to me: I am a
landscape! I am home to that follicle mite.
And the follicle mites aren’t alone—there
are more creatures on the surface of our
skin than skin cells themselves! And in our
gut and throughout our bodies we host
other minute creatures, a myriad of life
forms. Most of them are doing wonderful
things, like digesting our food for us. We
are at one with them. As we walk through
our own earthly landscape, they all come
along with us, walking around in and on
us! And frankly, we humans also walk
around like little mites on this planet,
doing some good things and some not-
so-good things. Fundamentally, we are all
simultaneously creatures and landscapes.
We’re all neighbors and fellow creatures:
gigantic, large, small or infinitesimal…it
just depends on your perspective. I’ve seen
one of those electron microscope photos of
the small creatures living on our skin. It’s
hard to believe, but they have even tinier
creatures crawling on them!
Perhaps we could look at our solar
system—and maybe the whole cosmos—
in a similar way. This insight made my
morning, and I pass it on to you to ponder.
The fall after summer
The Summer Triangle is late in coming
to the summer sky, so in early fall it’s still
up there, moving farther and farther west
as fall goes on. As it works its way down
into the west, the Summer Triangle carries
with it the beautiful Milky Way, streaming
right through it.
Pushing the Summer Triangle westward
is Pegasus the horse. A simple large
square, Pegasus is the foremost central
constellation and one of the biggest in fall.
Off the northern corner (upper left
corner on the illustration below) of Pegasus
is a widening arch of parallel sets of stars
sweeping toward Perseus, which makes a
triangle of constellations with Cassiopeia
(the W shape that circumnavigates the
North Star opposite the Big Dipper).
Starting from that upper corner of Pegasus,
three pairs of stars sweep northwest in a
curved triangular shape, each pair getting
wider apart.
That second pair of stars is very
important. Look up from them and slightly
to the left, about the same distance as the
Illustration from stellarium.org.
space between
the two stars. See
that little fuzzy
Greeley Wells
spot? That’s the
Andromeda
Galaxy, our closest galactic neighbor and
the only galaxy we can see with our naked
eyes. It’s actually moving towards us, and
in some billions of years we’re destined
to collide with it! (I previously described
this incredible collision in “Never touch
each other” in the winter 2013 issue of
the Applegater.)
Of note
Venus is now the sentinel of the sunrise,
brighter than anything but the moon.
Venus, because of her sun-centric orbit, is
always either in our dawn before sunrise
or in our dusk after sunset. Only Mercury
lives closer to the sun than Venus, which
is why we don’t get to see either of these
planets for long.
Jupiter is high in the southwest at dusk
in late summer, and he’s steadily falling into
the west as fall begins. The other planets
are no longer very bright.
The event of a lifetime was on August
21, when the total solar eclipse of the sun
came to our state and across our whole
country. I did an expedition with a few
artists, photographers, friends, and family
to the totality zone more than an hour
northeast of Bend. I’ll share thoughts
and images in an upcoming movie I am
filming, directing, and producing—as
well as on greeleyandfriends.com. If you
like my articles, you may want to check
out this website.
Here’s to clear, dark night skies and
bright stars for you,
Greeley Wells
Greeley@greeley.me
