STARRY THOUGHTS
            A clear night in December is a good time for looking up at the stars. When you look up and view the stars, you are also looking back in time. These same stars shone over Abraham and over the Wisemen thousands of years ago but, from most of these stars, the light that started out at the time of these events has not reached us yet.
Amongst all the stars we see when we look up, there is a band of stars across the sky that is our Milky Way galaxy. We are about 26,000 light years from the center of this discus-shaped collection of more than 100 billion stars extending more than 100,000 light years from edge to edge and over 1,000 light years thick. (A light year is the distance light travels in one year at 186,000 miles per second.) Our Milky Way galaxy is one of about 21 galaxies in a local group about 3 billion light years in diameter. Many dozens of local groups are within 50 billion light years of us.
What we see when we look up is light that left the stars in a distant past that is barely possible to comprehend. Contemplating the seemingly tiny points of light we see scattered across the sky when we look up on a clear night gives us a new perspective on where we are in the scheme of things.
The stars we see as we look up are the stars that have presided over history. From the vantage point of a near star, our star—the sun – would appear as a faint point of twinkling light with its planets, including the earth, not visible to the naked eye. Yet this sun has sustained life by supplying our earth, just one tiny speck in the universe, with just the right amount of energy to provide the right conditions to support life, as we know it.
            With the calculations of more recent times that predict with uncanny accuracy the movements of the earth, sun, and stars, we no longer fear darkness and cold as ancient people did when the sun’s light seemed to be sinking lower in the sky. Yet many celebrations are based on the Winter Solstice when the sun reaches its lowest elevation. In 2009 in the Northern Hemisphere, this occurs December 21 at 11:49 AM CST, although the days will hardly seem longer for about a week.
            Looking up at the stars is a good time to reflect on how life on earth is supported by the great systems of the universe and how these systems have been in place looking back as far as we can reckon time. With that perspective, we can then consider how we can use earth’s resources to support life into the future.

Della Moen, Earth Team Volunteer, NRCS/Stephenson Soil and Water Conservation District, an equal opportunity provider and employer, 12/16/09 for publication on 12/19/09 in the Journal Standard, Freeport, Illinois) Della can be reached at info@stephensonswcd.org