That's what the Greeks called you. They called the sky Uranus, eldest and castrated of the sky-gods, and the study of the sky Urania. The Egyptians knew better. They called the night-sky Nut, the sky-goddess, in love with Geb, the earth god...but seperated from her lover by the air. A remarkable deduction, that air does not continue into the space where the stars are. They knew that the sky is dark, is a vacuum and a void that draws one, that attracts one. Our origins are tied to the sky. The heavy elements of which we are composed are starstuff, remnants of supernovae. Our very existence is tied to the stars.

Look up--then imagine you are looking down. Try to comprehend how far you are seeing. The star Vega is 22 light years away. That's roughly 150 trillion--150 times a million times a million--miles away. Yet we can see some galaxies with the naked eye. Don't think about how small the stars seem. Think how remarkable it is that we can see them at all, that its light flames so bright to bridge that unimaginable gulf.

If you fell up, into the sky, you would die of old age before you hit anything at all. Infinite, you teach us our smallness. You give us a sense of place, and if it's small, at least it's the truth. We hope to find other Minds within you--other intelligences. When we study you, do we see clues to a Mind that shaped--you? Some see a deliberately chosen Order, others only see regularities growing out of Chaos.

Stars are born and die within you. We are one planet out of nine, circling one star out of a hundred billion stars out of one galaxy of a hundred billion galaxies. Dark and mysterious and ever-suprising, I stare from a hill into the night sky. I don't worship you, but I strive to understand you. I am continually inspired, amaed and astounded by you.

It's been a longstanding romance, you and I. We ask questions and sometimes we get hints--but mostly we get a maddening Mona Lisa smile....a mystery without end.