Source: SkyView app
Mars was rising. It’s famous for being the red planet, harbinger of war, home of countless science fiction monsters and villains as well as a few hapless and sometimes stranded Earthlings, but its color varies from red to pale yellow. The object I saw in the eastern sky was red and so bright I thought at first it must be some plane’s navigation light, but it wasn’t moving, and there were no other lights around it. I had to pull up one of my astronomy apps to confirm that, yes, it was Mars, which right now happens to be just under 78.7 million miles away from us. That’s slightly over half its average distance of 140 million miles. So Mars isn’t as close as it could get—our two planets will come within roughly 34 million miles of each other, but that won’t happen for over two hundred years.
I first spotted it through the trees. The red line in the picture is the horizon and, as you can see, it’s in the constellation Cancer. There was a satellite underneath it, drifting. We used to have a thick wall of trees behind our house but then the houses on the street that runs parallel to ours were sold. The houses were knocked down and most of the trees were cleared to make space for bigger, taller houses. It’s the way things are going. All around us older houses are being sold, knocked down, new ones are going up. An hour or so later I went back outside and Mars, still red, still bright, had risen above the trees.
Because Thanksgiving is this Thursday it’s a short week for me. The office is quiet, most people having already left regardless of whether they’re staying close to home or not. The holiday will be, I know, a flurry of activity, but at least for now everything’s quiet. There are a few work-related matters to wrap up but most of the real work will be at home, making asparagus casserole and cinnamon peaches—that’s two different dishes, though I’m sure there’s some nouvelle cuisine somewhere that’s combined asparagus, peaches, and probably even cinnamon.
Mars, the blood-red planet, was so peaceful and still in the night sky when I went out to look at it. A great horned owl hooted in the distance. And then there was a barred owl, calling out, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?”
With Thanksgiving coming we’re all cooking.
Thank for preparing and serving this beautiful post for us, Chris, seasoned just right.
You’re very lucky, Ann, that Michael so often cooks for you.