Beautiful Sky

One bad thing about Bombay is that the view of the sky is severely compromised by the intense lights on the ground. Except for Orion and some of the other brighter constellations, nothing is visible. That is the view from the terrace of my building, some 25 metres above the ground level. From the side of a well-lit road of course, one would be lucky to spot even a dozen stars.

I remember my last visit to Rajasthan about two years ago. The sky above my ancestral village looked incredible, dappled with so many white dots that it seemed as if someone had swept a paintbrush through the air at a short distance from the canvas. Hundreds of stars everywhere! One of the great pleasures of my life is to look at the stars and admire the breathtaking beauty of the universe. And admire the great march of astronomy and physics from Kepler and Galileo to Einstein and Hubble.

Here in WIMWI, the sky presents an intermediate view. It is much better than that in Bombay, though not as good as in rural Rajasthan. Watching Venus and Mars glowing in the evening whenever I walk past or on the Ramp with the ever-varying Moon in between, is quite enough to make me smile. And so is the picture of the brilliant stars of Orion and the brightest star Sirius, flanked by hundreds of fainter, but still pretty stars, that I see whenever I walk back to my dorm late at night.

I really need to print out some skymaps, get a compass, and get out and gaze at stars more :)