From atop Humphrey’s Peak in Flagstaff we can see the Grand Canyon some 60 miles away and mountain ranges 100 miles distant. Can such a view and one’s emotional reaction to it ever be justly described? I think so, for on his first trip to the Sierra Nevadas, the great American naturalist John Muir wrote, “We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
Thankfully, Muir also graced the star gazers amongst us with even more of his genius, exclaiming that, “When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”
It is hard not to gaze upon the magical star Vega, some 25 light years—or 150 trillion miles—from us, or be drawn by the magnetism and beauty of the Pleiades (an open star cluster at nearly 450 light years out in space) and not hear the majesty of John Muir. Even if our glances are fleeting, these nighttime wonders consistently spur at least a little of Muir’s “kindling enthusiasm.” For all, I believe, there always seems to be a moment of connection to the stars that brings Muir to mind.
However that connection is felt, it can become closer to indescribable when gifted with the sight of the Andromeda galaxy, when even the grandest words seem to fall short. There are endless wonders in our galaxy, the Milky Way, more than enough to fill a lifetime of study. Still, all of its glory pales against the one thing in the sky that is beyond it. Andromeda is the most remote object discernible to the naked eye.
It appears as just a bit of fuzzy light between Cassiopeia and the Great Square of Pegasus. And yet, Andromeda contains as many as one trillion stars whose combined light travels 2.5 million years to reach us wherever and whenever we pause to take a look at the darkness above.
All of the other billions of galaxies, as incredible as they are, remain invisible to us without the use of modern instrumentation. So, it becomes Andromeda that speaks to us, that acts like a kind of mirror for our own galaxy, though the Milky Way is much smaller and contains not even half as many stars.
For me, every time I find Andromeda I let go a muffled shout and I think of John Muir trying to grasp the enormity of what is now Yosemite National Park. I am seeing so far into the past I can barely comprehend the view. A telescope helps to give it shape. Like the Milky Way, it is a spiral with a brightly glowing core containing a massive black hole. In its ten billion years of existence it has likely collided with other galaxies, birthing its tremendous size, a whopping diameter of 200,000 light years.
Some of us dream of being able to look into the future, to glimpse it before all others, for to do so is to make possible boundless insights and influence. But, we know better. We can in Andromeda, however, recognize that so much has come before us. Years become a fraction of a second. Knowing that, we can, with a transformed humility, try to understand how stars and galaxies form, and how life has emerged and changed and brought us to this incredibly brief slice of the infinite when we can ponder all of that through a momentary glance upwards.
My friends and I would often wonder, while standing at the water’s edge along New Jersey’s shore and staring at the horizon where sea and sky joined, just how far away that really was. Now, I track down our neighboring galaxy and realize that the horizon of my youth was barely more than a stone’s throw compared to my present view. And, the best part of that is knowing that’s exactly how it should be.
Harold Meckler can be contacted at byaakov54@gmail.com