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Through the panes of glass, the mesh of screen, beyond a stand of trees, over a hill and next to the rustic timberframe and stone of the about-to-be-opened new lodge at Primland, I can see a tall silver tower, scaffolding wrapped around the observation windows below its round dome, which is starting to catch and reflect the sunlight in a subdued glow now that the rainclouds are thinning to blue sky.
In one sense, it seems out of place, not of the same material as the building next to it, or the mountains surrounding it, but in another way, it’s stunning and makes sense – observatories are generally set in the middle of nowhere, away from light pollution and traffic, rising out of their landscapes to watch the heavens at night. There’s a sense of quiet and great beyond in their presence, perhaps because of what they’re looking at.
The morning following our visit to its dome, the magic has become a little clearer as I remember the scatter of stars visible through the rectangular window that opened in the dome (I can see its outlines now, closed up for daylight). It was too cloudy for us to look through the telescope and see anything, but we saw images of what the telescope has photographed, and they were not that much less magical on the computer screen than they would have been through the lenses. Spiral arms and bright clusters of stars, the cloudy colors of nebulae, in one image two galaxies that looked like they were dancing a waltz together, I assume as the gravity of one pulled at the stars of the other. Standing in the dome, as it whirred and moved around us and as the telescope rotated, looking for a spot in the sky, I felt at once the small and massive scale of me and the universe. No wonder we’ve looked at the stars for millennia, created pictures and stories out of their patterns, written poetry and music about the shining nights.
Now, in less mysterious daylight, I look at the dome, and wonder what it might see tonight, 27 million light years away, after I’ve gone back the 60-some miles to Roanoke.
