Celestial Phenomena I Saw in 2024

It’s almost the final month of 2024.

Here’s some photos of celestial happenings I witnessed this year: an aurora (seen in Georgetown, Indiana), an eclipse (viewed near Columbus, Indiana; my thanks to my friend Ryan for these snapshots) and another aurora (spotted from my backyard in Horse Cave, Kentucky):

It’s nice to see and know, however tough and unknown things might get down here, that there are strange and wonderful happenings pouring down from above—electro-magnetic explosions of waving light, silvery-baroque sunbursts born from the occlusion of stars and planetary objects.

…this was normal, tender, lovely, full of masterful beauty and power, yet with a peace breathing the very spirit of interplanetary space, where time is not, where nothing is old, yet never young, in presence of which mere human emotion fades and faints and utterly dies away. The great psychic currents of the universe, in the moral and spiritual onrush and splendid vitality, never flow with such an overwhelming, tangible rush as in those moments of cosmic silence, of repressed, superb possibility. I looked for twenty seconds—and never did they flee with such amazing speed—and for thirty more I sketched the streamers with prosaic pencil and paper. It was like attempting to catch the solar system in a bird-cage.

A needle-shaft of true, returning sunlight flashed over the world, and again that strange, invariable sigh from the hushed multitude, as of tension relaxed, rose from the streets like a veritable tribute to immensity. Totality was over. — Mabel Loomis Todd on an eclipse viewed from Tripoli on May 28, 1900.

The brighter light seemed to flow, now to mass itself in wreathing folds in one quarter, from which lustrous streamers shot upward, and anon to run in waves through the system of some dimmer figure as if to infuse new life within it. It is impossible to witness such a beautiful phenomenon without a sense of awe, and yet this sentiment is not inspired by its brilliancy but rather by its delicacy in light and colour, its transparency, and above all by its tremulous evanescence of form. There is no glittering splendour to dazzle the eye, as has been too often described; rather the appeal is to the imagination by the suggestion of something wholly spiritual, something instinct with a fluttering ethereal life, serenely confident yet restlessly mobile.

One wonders why history does not tell us of ‘aurora’ worshippers, so easily could the phenomenon be considered the manifestation of ‘god’ or ‘demon.’ To the little silent group which stood at gaze before such enchantment it seemed profane to return to the mental and physical atmosphere of our house. — Description of the northern lights in the personal journal (entry dated June 22, 1911) of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, recorded not long before he and his expedition were lost to an Antarctic blizzard

I hope everybody who celebrates it had a nice Thanksgiving, and a good Christmas and New Years to come.