PLANETS
I’ve been reading for several days that this week at about sundown seven planets will line up in the sky. Since all the planets are circling the sun at different speeds and at different distances, this is a very rare occurrence. So when I saw the red light on in my neighbor Don’s backyard observatory I assumed that he, of all people, as a passionate astronomer, would be looking with great enthusiasm at this lineup of seven planets. So I walked over to take a look.
Don was there, his telescope towering above him, looking at his computer screen at a cluster of stars 12,000 light years away, way beyond any solar planets. When I asked him about the lineup of seven planets he looked at me blankly, as if he had never heard of the lineup. Mars is over there and Venus over there, he said, waving at the sky. They didn’t seem to be lined up at all but if they were he wasn’t interested. I asked him why?
No astrophysicist is interested in planets he said, they are interested in stars. Anyway, nearby planets are too bright to be able to look at with his telescope. What he was really interested in was whether there were any red stars, old dying stars, in this cluster of new blue stars, 12,000 light years away, so far away that the cluster couldn’t be seen at all by the naked eye, so far away that they seemed irrelevant, while just above us the planets were lining up.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 