Thanks, atmosphere!

On Wednesday, I had my lab for astronomy. To call it a lab feels a bit unfair: we looked at the summer sky for about an hour after taking a long walk through the soccer fields. There’s very little air pollution in Oberlin, so the dark is really.. dark. I couldn’t see the crowd of Astronomy students (there were about 40 of us out there) until I was right next to them. Besides my professor, there were three helpers and two upper-level students who act as tutors for the class. One of them, Everett, who I met in my first year at a swing dance, explained some of the basics – Cassiopaea! Polaris! Then, I stared at the moon and Jupiter though these crazily powerful telescopes and listened to Professor S explain what caused stars to twinkle.
“Do you like to breathe?” he asked. We all nodded. “Well, thank the atmosphere!” he continued jubilantly, going on to explain how the density of the atmosphere (generated by the horizon, due to Earth’s middle-heavy shape) caused stars to glimmer as their light reflected through. Professor S is probably one of the most cheerful, jubilant lecturers I’ve ever heard. He also says the word “sky” in a very warm, sweet way.
With a green laser, so powerful that he had to put it away when a plane flew by, Professor S pointed out the Summer Triangle: Vega, Deneb and Altair. I can find it everywhere now.

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Circus Arts Exco went really well today. We’re a day behind in the syllabus, but as a group, we’ve started to work together. There’s comradery growing between the circus core and the new folks. I love teaching this group; it’s gorgeous to watch folks work together. As we’re going to be doing a lot of constructive criticism later, it’s important to get to know each other.

Otherwise, OCircus is kicking-off. We’ve got a weekend booked for the Fall show at the Cat and the Cream, so November will be a crazy, crazy month.