notes from a retired planetarium projectionist
Kept the way my father kept his: whenever something happens, and not before. Newest on top, naturally, because I am a modern woman.
The Pleiades looked like they'd been polished. That is the entire entry. Some nights are for noting only that the sky showed up.
Comet (the cat) sat on the observatory step for the full two hours and has consequently decided the telescope is hers. I have elected not to argue with a nine-kilogram opinion.
Dew on the eyepiece by ten. Wrapped the tripod in the old green blanket from the projection booth — the one that smells faintly of dust and forty years of Tuesday matinees. Mars came up red and punctual at 21:40.
A boy on a bicycle stopped to ask what I was looking at. I showed him Mars. He said "that's it?" and I said yes, and that it is 225 million kilometres away, and he looked at it much longer after that. This is the whole trick, incidentally. That's the entire job I used to do.
The sky paid me back for the name I gave the old projector: green curtain on the northern horizon from 22:15 until I gave up and went to bed, which is to say it was still going when I gave up. The first aurora I ever saw was from the planetarium's loading dock during a fire drill in 1991, and I have always suspected the alarm knew what it was doing.
Cleaned the 10". Found, behind the objective, a spider who has clearly established squatter's rights since August. We have come to an arrangement: she keeps the west side, I keep the optics. Her web caught the porch light and for a moment I had two moons.
Equinox was two days ago; the calendar and the sky are not in a hurry to agree with each other and neither am I. Retired people keep the best hours. I observed at 4 a.m. simply because I could, which is the entire point of the retirement, some days.