Why look at the Moon?

Table of contents

I. Why Bother?

The year is 1609. A professor of mathematics at the University of Padua has just finished refining an early version of his “spyglass”. He proceeds to take the liberty of handing over the rights of manufacturing said spyglass to the Venetian Senate. Once he’s done bargaining for a promotion and tenure in exchange for his invention, he finally points this spyglass up at the moon. This single act of curiosity sets into motion a chain of events that propelled science forward by decades and continues to shape our understanding of the universe to this day. That professor of mathematics, was the renowned Galileo Galilei.

The year is 2023. A titleless scrawny 20-something year old dude has just found an old DSLR collecting dust in his store room. He then proceeds to conveniently forget the DSLR at home, before heading to work in Delhi. Once he’s done begging his parents to somehow have the DSLR sent over, he finally points this DSLR up at the heart of the Orion Nebula. This single act of curiosity sets into motion a chain of events that has yet to propel said individual to any place of significance, or lead him to make any meaningful impact upon the world. That titleless scrawny 20-something year old dude is me.

An interesting point of contrast between my short and, as of yet insignificant journey in the world of astronomy, and that of Galileo, is the difference between the targets we initially found ourselves fascinated by. While Galileo spent roughly two consecutive weeks out in the winter nights of 1609, observing the moon through his spyglass and drawing detailed sketches of its surface, I decided to occupy myself straight away with the study of an object unfathomably further away, buried deep in the heart of space. To be exact, the distance between our respective objects of interest is roughly 1500 light-years - 1500 light-years’ worth of distance afforded to me by the efforts of one man looking up at the moon four centuries ago.

For the first year or so of my space adventures my lens’ dial never budged from “250mm” - the farthest reach of my trusty Canon EF-S 55–250mm. My widefield lens simply sat in a corner collecting dust. My mindset was very much that of - “Any object not far enough to have its distance measured in light years is not worth capturing”. To me the moon was nothing but an inconvenience - drowning out the lights of the faint deep space objects I was so fascinated by - there was nothing interesting about the moon. Utterly uninteresting.

Today we recognize the lunar surface in perhaps even greater detail than the people of 1609 likely knew their own neighborhoods. So why bother observing it in the Year of our Lord 2025? Besides our home planet, there is no celestial object that has been better explored than our cosmic companion. Nearly every single human in today’s digital age has at some point in their life pointed their phone up at the moon and taken a picture that would have made Galileo’s hair curl up. Years of observation have all but proved that there is no easter bunny up there for us to discover, there is no cosmic chef pulling out chunks of cheese from the surface and there are certainly no flying bat-people on the lunar surface. So why bother? The moon, I reasoned, is like the pair of socks you only ever wear when everything else is in the wash.

Why bother?

II. AQI 500

As a geek with a particular fondness for astronomy, there is no greater dream I have than to escape to the country side just to have access to clear skies all year long - provided they have internet. Also jobs. Quick commerce too actually. Oh and a McDon- you know what the country lifestyle might not be for me actually. Calling Delhi my home, however, is something I very much would like to do away with. The city lacks a soul - atleast one that would call out to me. The weather is unpleasant at the best of times and unbearable at its worst, the municipal services are sub-par, and the cuisine is a crime against humanity itself - second only to the pollution.

Pollution. I don’t think I realized the scale of what that word meant before I moved to this city. The power the pollution in Delhi holds over its people draws a fascinating parallel to the power the Catholic Church held over the people of Galileo’s generation. Cities like Delhi introducing the noble concept of mixing the air we breathe with microscopic spawns of the Devil Himself certainly is a fascinating substitute to the power of the religious organization of the early modern era. I jest of course - there is no substitute, only an add-on. Anywho, you learn to deal with the cards you are dealt with, and I can’t exactly complain given that I knew my opponent’s deck had a pollution card - just Delhi throwing me another one of its cruel little challenges. I am not, however, one of Earth’s mightier warriors. Regardless this isn’t a story about a hero’s journey to defeating Earth’s spawniest little demons. No - this is a story about how scrawny old me was forced to bother.

I have known myself for quite a while now - certainly for the better part of my lifetime. I know for a fact that if Joker attacked the city, for instance, and took my child protege hostage, I would much rather have the authorities deal with it than don a goofy mask and call myself Batman. Having no stars to photograph because of all the pollution simply highlighted to me the underutilized appeal of my couch. Having a lie in and watching a couple of episodes of The Office is my answer to Delhi’s pollution. Well as it turns out there’s only so many times you can watch Michael throw out innuendos aimed at Pam before you start wanting to throw the remote at the TV yourself. Life needs a purpose.

Purpose. I don’t think I realized the scale of what that word meant before I got into this hobby. Carrying 10kgs worth of equipment up a flight of stairs, setting all of it up on a tripod, aligning it meticulously with the North Star, pointing my camera at my target, finding focus, reframing, losing focus, finding focus again, losing my target, finding it again, running out of batteries, running out of storage, waiting for hours on the roof, staring at my camera shooting away at one solitary spot in the sky, accompanied by nothing but Delhi’s finest mosquitoes and the cold night air - I did all of this over and over and over again, because it gave me a purpose. Purpose, I have discovered, lies in creation. We were born to create. There is no better feeling in the world than to grind away for hours upon hours, for a miniscule increase in the quality of my data, to ever so slightly increase the contrast between Orion’s core and it’s outer edge, to draw out the last bits of details from Andromeda’s rings or to make Pleiades a slightly deeper shade of blue.

I had found my purpose in astrophotography once, and I needed to rediscover it. I, however, am not Batman. I am a corporate employee. I wake up in the morning, go to work, only to come back home tired and hungry - there is no way this cycle can end with anything other than a dinner and a good night’s sleep. Maybe, just maybe, if I get a night with clear skies, I can sacrifice some of that sleep for an all night astrophotography session. Maybe… hopefully… one of these nights. Why do we even celebrate Diwali? Something something, Blue Guy defeating guy with many heads, uhhh, wait Diwali isn’t even the problem? Farmers burning - thingy thingy - oh uhh, emissions - so I make this go away by taking public transport? Wait I already take public transport. Aww man, all those tweets supporting Greta Thunberg and this is what I get? Maybe its time to move to the country side after all - I mean who even needs McDonald’s, I need to start eating healthy anyways - oh wait I have a job - actually, who even needs a job. What I need right now is clear skies… clear skies… clear sky… oh wait Holy Mother of God the skies are clear, my prayers have been heard! I am sorry Blue Guy! I will never call you Blue Guy ever again! Where’s my camera? Boy do I need to organize my cupboards. Wait no time. Must get everything to the rooftop at once. Plop everything down - don’t hurt yourself setting up the tripod, find Polaris - oh wait the Moon is out, I am going to have a hard time finding Polaris - well let’s just give it my best shot, I mean I know this roof better than I know my own room at this point. Line up the tripod with the left most pole… tilt 23.5 degrees up… edge a little closer to the billboard. Voila! Polaris should show up on my viewfinder now. Let’s see… yeah I think that’s a star… hmmm… should be Polaris, let’s check Stellarium - where’s my phone, I swear I kept it here somewhere - there you are. Let’s see… Polaris… wait where’d it go!? Also… where’d that funny looking rabbit come from? Wait nevermind that’s just a cloud - oh wait.

Clouds.

III. Why look at the moon?

A major flaw in the human psyche is our inability to recognize the value of something — or someone — until it’s been taken away from us. I am not the first person to have that epiphany - there’s likely a grounded 9 year old kid somewhere out there having that same realization this very instant. Quotes, however, lose their meaning quickly when overused. Sometimes, it takes a soft nudge in the wrong direction to truly understand what a quote like that means — and what are we, if not a collection of soft, cruel nudges? Every missed opportunity is a moment to realize the value of that which you have lost, to realize that everything that we perceive with our eyes has been placed there because it has a part to play in our world.

Every negative nudge I have faced in recent history has taught me to take a step back, and try to perceive. Perceive the emotions of those around me. Perceive the beauty of those that I overlook in my naivety. Perceive the value of the ones I risk losing. Perception, I’ve realized, is deceptively effortful. It demands that we give attention to people if we ever hope to understand their value. A moment’s glance teaches you to expect consistency, staleness and monotony. When you truly put in effort to get to know a person, you realize that their best qualities are meant to be earned.

By this point in the article, I have spent a fair amount of time emphasizing that I am not one of life’s smartest creations. Reflection helps me channel my thoughts; writing them down internalizes them. What happened after the Great Invasion of the Clouds wasn’t a moment of poetic realization. A more accurate descriptor would be “realization by resignation”. I didn’t have any stars to photograph. I did however have 10 kgs worth of equipment that I would have to lug down, after hauling it all the way up just minutes earlier. So I looked around, and waited. The sky was by no means gloomy, maybe if I waited for a while things would clear up. I wish the next part of the story would be about how I utilized the time spent waiting reading a book, or even trying to get some landscape shots with my camera - that would however be extremely out of character for the story being told here. Fortunately, I did no such thing.

I just waited. And stared. At the sky. The moonlit sky. Filled with clouds. Clouds covering the stars. Clouds surrounding - the Moon.