Star Party

We don’t usually get to see the Perseids.

Historically, we usually get fogged out. This year we had high hopes, as August 12th , the night of the new moon, was also right at the peak of that reliable, annual meteor shower, named for it’s supposed origin near the constellation Perseus. As the date approached, the forecast looked ideal.

We proposed, to a few of the regulars who make merry together, a “star party” on that auspicious evening. We wrangled an invitation to use Jim’s lawn on the south end, with most of the mass of this island between us and the glow of Rockland, and with an open field and nearby shoreline providing a generous sky to look at. I didn’t know whether many would attend, but they did--carrying small telescopes and good binoculars on tripods, lawn chairs, boxes of wine. The mosquitoes weren’t even too ferocious (one good thing about this drought, I suppose). We thought too late about some extra red headlamps, but we’ll have those on the list for next year.

I downloaded one of those phone apps that identifies stars and constellations just by pointing the device (including, just for fun, the possibility of scanning the South Pacific sky through the ground at our feet). It elicited many remarks of “Oh, cool!” and “I’m going to get that!” but looking at the bright screen of a cell phone was not that exciting. That night’s pleasing darkness was engaging and not to be wasted, and I put the phone away.

Backyard-astronomy-wise, it had already been a good day: the partial solar eclipse encouraged many references in the bakery to a bite out of a cookie. As assorted customers, mainly children, showed up in the early afternoon to buy whoopie pies, I’d pop out with a number 14 welding glass or a leftover set of cardboard eclipse glasses from Maine’s famous total eclipse of 2024, and inquire whether they had seen the sun. Handing over the lens, there was reliably one or another expression of enthusiasm.

This year, as it happened, was without a doubt the best Perseid meteor display I can remember. Many of the shooting stars were quite brilliant, with glowing tails and long fiery arcs lasting the two or three seconds needed to turn and look.

The Milky Way appeared as a river of subtle light, a thick paint swath of stars, the disc of the galaxy seen edgeways from our place within it. Dark sky enthusiasts talk about place using Bortle scale rankings and light-meter readings, and we can do that too, but no; Matinicus is not as dark as it is way up in the woods, because people live here. This remote island is still a town, if a small one, and Rockland and Vinalhaven are not that far away. But we enjoy what the light-pollution charts call a “rural sky,” where only “minor light pollution is visible on the horizon,” Bortle scale 3. When there is no moon, and the humidity is low, the Milky Way here is remarkable.

We all noticed how there were so damned many satellites! If only they were all doing something useful. Many are junk, defunct or obsolete, hurtling around in orbit accomplishing nothing. High speed scrap iron.

Our dark sky is valued, but we cannot build a fence around it. Matinicus is not a community given to rules when simpler means will suffice, and a plantation cannot enact an ordinance easily anyway; such requires the state legislature, meaning enactment of anything could take years. (We have exactly one ordinance, that being our unique disposal deposit requirement for motor vehicles, to deal with a potentially overwhelming abandoned car problem.) We cannot decide by any act of paperwork or executive fiat that we are a place where dark skies are admired and protected. We can, however, encourage a respect for starlight darkness by peer pressure, and we can make known to visitors and new islanders that an interesting night sky is part of our community’s identity.

Given the comments I heard from folks who attended our little party, I’d say they enjoyed being together in the dark. It’s unusual, these days, to actually spend much time in the dark.

Years ago, Danny across the street wanted a big mercury vapor light in his dooryard. He was the Road Commissioner and worked in his unofficial capacity as the island mechanic, so this seemed valid enough, but nothing he did truly required a huge streetlight all night. His desire may have been at least in part because Mark had one down at his wharf at the Lower Harbor. Anyway, Dan’s friend Paul, across the road, in his unofficial capacity as the island electrician, simply remarked that he refused to wire it up. “I like to look at the stars.”