Thursday, April 26, 2012

Seeing Halley's Comet


When I was a little kid my sisters and I took our parents' binoculars out onto the street to look for Halley's Comet, which was supposed to be streaking overhead at that very moment. I understood that it wouldn't come back until I was in my 80s, and I didn't want to have to wait that long. Waiting for Christmas to come took long enough. Eighty years between events seems a lifetime, which it often is, of course. We stood under a streetlight and gazed into the heavens. The perils of light pollution were still unknown to us. I have no idea if we saw it, but we did find a star that when viewed through the binoculars, appeared to be two stars. I'm pretty sure that was it. I'll just go ahead and check that one off the life list.

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