The Incidental Museum (PART 1)

Luminous Menagerie

When we look up at the starlit sky we often don’t think of the light we see as separate from the star itself. Its easy to forget that each point of light is of a different age, not because of how old the star is, but because of the time it takes for its light to reach our eyes. The sky twinkles with events from distinctly different time periods, simultaneously.

If we look at the constellation Orion, we will see seven stars. But these stars, as events of light, are showing us different periods of time. As these words are being written, the light of Bellatrix is arriving from a time when Daniel Boone is in the early stages of exploring Kentucky in 1769. We see Betelge in 1370, just as Chaucer finishes “The Book of the Duchess”.  What we see of Mintaka is taking place as Marco Polo prepares to leave China, and Alnilam appears as it happened while Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, Yijing, studies Sanskrit in Sumatra in the year 671. Alnitak is occurring in the year 1233, just as the Inquisition is getting under way. Rigel is happening in 1142 as the Empress Matilda is being chased out of London, and what we witness of Saiph coincides with a bloody siege in 1291 as the Christian City of Acre is falling and the Crusades are at their end.

To scan the stars is to observe history out of order. The night sky is a menagerie of time, filled with luminous, dislocated specimens like a cabinet of curiosities or a gallery of images from different eras. With the naked eye, the most ancient starlight we can hope to see happened about 2000 years ago.

In 1990 the Voyager 1 spacecraft was about 4 billion miles from Earth. Images of our planet, from that vantage point showed events that were already 6 hours old by the time they reached Voyager’s camera lens. Today Voyager 1 is approximately 11.2 billion miles away. If focused on Earth its lens would capture an image 16.6 hours old.  If we were currently orbiting Polaris (the North Star) and had the appropriate equipment, we could be watching the Earth 680 years ago. Perhaps someday, museums will be embodied by technologies that allow us to watch our own past. And rather than watching recordings or scrolling through deteriorating media we will witness it unfold in real time, and touch its original light reflected back from the depths of space.

MWB, 2012