Not every falling star is in a hurry. The Taurids arrive at about 28 kilometres a second — the slowest of the well-known showers — and they cross a wide stretch of sky over several seconds, bright enough that skywatchers call them the Halloween fireballs. They are debris from Comet Encke, gravel rather than dust, which is part of why they burn so long and so bright.
Two branches of the stream overlap now. The Southern Taurids peak on the night of November 4–5, and the Northern Taurids follow on November 11–12. Expect only a handful an hour from each — this is not a shower for counting. Look toward Taurus, near the orange star Aldebaran and the small Pleiades cluster; the radiant stands highest around midnight, and the waning crescent moon those nights will not interfere.
The sky on this page keeps the season in its small way — linger on the night scene this week and the meteors will come a little more often, and a little more slowly. The real ones are better, of course. Step outside if you can, stay past midnight, and wait for the one bright one. With the Taurids, one is enough.
The Hunter’s Moon
After the harvest moon comes the hunter’s. The fields are cleared, the leaves are falling, and game is easier to see in the bare woods — or so the old names say. This one also marks the first full moon of the new dark half of the year, and it feels like it.
This year it rises on Sunday evening, October 25, close to sunset, and reaches full just after midnight. For a few nights around it the light is strong enough to walk by, and the dunes will hold their edges late. Go out while it is low if you can: a rising full moon looks larger than it has any right to.
A full moon is not the end of darkness. It is the night on a different setting — the dunes lit silver, the shadows pooled and patient, everything visible and nothing hurried. The dark will be back at its full strength soon enough. It always is.
An old comet keeps its appointments
Every October, the Earth walks through a trail of dust left behind by Halley’s comet — grains no bigger than sand, travelling together for centuries. For about ten days in the middle of the month the trail is thickest, and the night side of the planet turns into it like a car into rain.
When one of those grains meets the sky, it burns for a second and is gone. The shower is called the Orionids, because its streaks appear to radiate from Orion — the hunter standing in the east at midnight, club raised, entirely unbothered by the weather he is making.
The sky on this page knows the season, in its small way — linger on the night scene this week and the meteors will come a little more often. The real ones are better, of course. Their peak is October 21–22, best after midnight, and the moon will be a thin crescent that sets early and leaves the sky dark.
On stillness
The desert does not try to be calm. It simply has nowhere to be.
Stillness, I’ve noticed, is not the absence of motion. The sand moves a grain at a time; the stars wheel so slowly you have to stop watching to see it. Everything is moving. Nothing is rushing.
Sit out here long enough and your own speed starts to feel strange, like shouting in a library. That is not the desert judging you. That is the desert inviting you to match its pace.
What the desert knows about waiting
Nothing in the desert hurries, and nothing in the desert is late.
A seed can wait a decade for rain. It doesn’t check the forecast or optimize its dormancy. It simply stays ready, underground, in the dark, for as long as readiness takes.
I think about that when the day has been loud. Most of what felt urgent was only noisy. The seed is not behind schedule. There is no schedule. There is only the rain, whenever it comes.
The moon, tonight
Look up. The moon is keeping its slow calendar whether or not anyone is watching. A little more than a sliver tonight; a little more tomorrow.
It doesn’t perform fullness. It just goes around.
There’s a lesson in that, but the night doesn’t lecture. I’ll leave it at that.