At about a quarter to three this morning, I was nudged by an intrusive thought which, while not quite verbal, amounted to: You're going to see something in the sky. This was accompanied by a faint, not-quite-visual sense of a very large disk. Without questioning anything or formulating any particular expectations, I immediately got up, put on a pair of flip-flops, and went outside.
There was a very thin cirrostratus cloud layer covering the whole sky, just thick enough that the only visible heavenly bodies were the gibbous Moon and Jupiter, and just barely thick enough to make visible a 22-degree halo around the Moon, with Jupiter inside the halo.
I went inside, got my phone, and took a photo. Photos of the night sky never come out well, but you can sort of see the halo in this one. (The bright speck to the left is Jupiter. The other speck, closer to the Moon, is an artifact of the camera; there was nothing in the sky at that point.)
Minutes later, the clouds had thinned and the halo was gone. I caught it at just the right time.
2 comments:
When astronomical synchronicities of this kind occur; I find they are an important reminder that we dwell in a living and purposive universe - which is important even 'tho' we seldom know their specific meaning.
Yes, that's very true.
When I see a "wheel" in the sky with the Moon at the center, my immediate thought is "O Fortuna / Velut luna . . . ." In the Carmina Burana illustration, moon-like Fortuna herself is in the center of the wheel, and the Jupiter position is occupied by the rising figure saying "Regnabo," "I shall reign." (This means, conceptually, that Saturn is still reigning but that the days of his reign are numbered. I'm not sure whether to see that as a good omen or an evil one -- Saturn as king of the golden age, or Saturn as Moloch?)
Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it. The message could be as simple as "Hey, Tychonievich!" (My surname ultimately derives from Tyche, the Greek name of Fortuna. My middle name, James, means "supplanter" and thus syncs with Jupiter in the "Regnabo" position.)
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