It was Friday night; it was dark and windy outside. It was also the thirteenth day of the month, Friday the 13th!
I was listening to a talk during the astronomy club’s monthly meeting. While the speaker was talking I was copying some things into a Word document. I could hear the wind blowing through the trees outside, at times, loud enough to cause a little apprehension. During the day the yard had been covered with broken branches and papers from the neighbor’s trash. The branches I’d have to pick up later but the papers would long be gone by morning.
Suddenly, the lights flickered and then went dark. The speaker on my screen froze in place. I looked out the window and all I could see were the lights of a couple cars in the valley below. All the buildings and parking lots were dark. Even the traffic lights had gone out.
I saved my document and shut off the computer. Then I went outside.
The sky was clear, which certainly goes against Pittsburgh weather norms. Any time that an astronomical event happens, chances are that there will be clouds in the sky! Our sky is almost always cloudy.
I grabbed my coat and went out for a walk around the block. I saw someone’s flashlight playing across their house and then it went out. I didn’t see anyone else. No one else had bothered to step outside and look around. Most of the houses were dark. A couple houses had solar lights on their sidewalks and porches, but they were unobtrusive. No flickering lights from candles or beams from flashlights could be seen.
Coming around a bend I came to a house that seemed to be glowing. They had a noisy generator running beside the house and a couple lights lit inside. That house was the only bright spot in the neighborhood. The rest of the neighborhood was dark, and I walked with my head tilted up.
Orion was spectacular; I definitely could see more stars than usual from my normally light polluted neighborhood. To the left of Orion was Sirius with Jupiter near Castor and Pollux higher above it. Off to the right were Aldebaran and the Pleiades. I watched a satellite pass through Auriga, easily seen and followed even with my poor eyesight.
A car sitting a couple houses away started up, turning its headlights on. The reflection off of the chrome bumper of the truck it was facing caught me directly in the eye. Hoping that it would soon leave, I went behind my car, in the shadows to wait.
I decided to take another walk around the block. The beautiful views of the sky kept me company until I got to the house with the noisy generator. He now had a couple spotlights on, shining onto his driveway, his neighbor’s houses and into my dark-adapted eyes.
(“Thank heavens he had those lights on, he was protecting our neighborhood from bands of roaming vandals, muggers and rapists!” He was “protecting” us from seeing the stars above. I have to admit it…I did call him a few choice names!)
Once I was past the noisy, glaring house and back into the quiet darkness, I started thinking about how this resembled the neighborhood of days gone by, before we became the frightened society that we are now. People’s porch lights would go out a short while after dark. If they did stay on they were only normal light bulbs, no flood lights or LED bulbs. The cities weren’t as brightly lit and we could see SO many more stars than now. The stars are slowly disappearing, and it is because we are afraid of the dark. What a shame!
I passed a man in his car listening to the radio, his interior lights were on, I could see him but he had no idea that I had passed him. A bit further on, the car that had flashed me before was still sitting with its lights on. A woman sat inside, the interior lights on also, checking her phone for who knows what. I covered my eyes to avoid getting blinded and passed her by. She didn’t see me pass by either. Their lights hid me from them!
I sat for awhile in a lawn chair in the front yard with my binoculars. Orion had moved behind a tree, a bit closer to the western horizon. Behind me, the Big Dipper was standing on its handle. Occasional blasts of wind whipped by. For the most part, it was nice and quiet. I was starting to get cold so I zipped up my jacket and returned to the inside.
I lit a couple candles so that I could write a few notes and then went to bed and snuggled under my covers for a good night’s sleep. I originally thought that it was bad luck that my power had gone off, right in the middle of a meeting no less. Instead it was just the opposite. My Friday the 13th ended up giving me a couple hours of quiet and dark sky. Who says Friday the 13ths are bad luck? Not me!
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