See you on the south side of the moon

Faraway galaxies and other celestial bodies are bringing us closer to the deepest parts of ourselves

In 1633, Galileo was forced to recant his scientific findings that confirmed the Copernican view of the universe. We’re the lucky ones. There’s never been a better time to be an (armchair) astronomer. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been releasing mind-expanding images since July 2022, casually making revelations about the universe led by photographic evidence that would make an LSD-high artist proud. Earlier this month, it followed up on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope of the farthest star ever detected in the very distant universe, within the first billion years after the big bang. The star has been given a fittingly poetic name, Earendel, which would make

Tolkien fans proud. Meanwhile, Nasa’s Instagram feed combines poetry and physics with the grace of a ballerina balanced on a laser beam.

In our epoch, when the news is inevitably grim — from climate catastrophe to war, the AI invasion to olive-infused coffee — it is faraway galaxies and distant planets that bring us closer to the deepest parts of ourselves. At the moment, Isro’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, which made a safe, soft landing on the lunar surface on August 23, is everyone’s go-to sci-fi fantasy come to life. “I’ll see you on the south pole of the moon,” my Pink Floyd-addled brain mis-sings, knowing full well the mission’s aim is to conduct in-situ scientific experiments and not gather more material for progressive rock lyrics.
MAN, MOON, CAMERA
Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings website (born in 2006), renamed The Marginalian (in 2021), introduced me to an inspiring image from 1852: the first surviving photograph of the moon. Taken by John Adams Whipple, and made possible by the Great Refractor telescope acquired by the Harvard College Observatory in 1847, it signals the birth of astrophotography. Thanks to a kind friend, a framed print hangs from my bedroom wall, which allows it to stay in my line of vision even when I’m simply staring into space. As someone who has tried in vain to capture the moon in the night sky on her uncooperative Android phone for years, I’m in complete awe of Whipple, his refracting telescope (courtesy Harvard astronomer William Cranch Bond) and his daguerreotype photographic process. The two pioneers have left behind half a million glass plates in a visual library at Harvard, the largest such collection of astrophotography in the world. Unintended outcome: I feel less guilty about the countless moonrise and sunset pictures slowing down my phone as we speak.
I SEE DEAD STARS
Cut to July 12, 2022. Nasa released the first images from the JWST — trippy starscapes that wouldn’t be out of place in a fantasy colouring book. When Covid had, among other things, attacked our sense of taste and smell while recurring lockdowns had reduced life to a Beckettian wasteland, this miraculous telescope was the unexpected antidote. Cosmic cliffs, star births and deaths, and the deepest infrared image of the universe yet: it was a dramatic resurrection of hope and awe, if we were to employ the language of faith in our scientific setting. What blows my mind is how a honeycomb contraption (the telescope features a set of 18 hexagonal mirror segments) has released images of six surprisingly massive galaxies that existed between 500 and 700 million years after the universe was born with the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. That’s like almost at the start! “I see dead stars from a galaxy far, far away,” says the JWST in a ‘The Sixth Sense’ meets ‘Star Wars’ mash-up. How will we ever sleep again?
SPARE A THOUGHT FOR PLUTO
The past few years, while lapping up news stories picked up from science journals, I’ve made brave attempts at befriending physics through books. Werner Heisenberg’s ‘The Uncertainty Principle’ and Benjamín Labatut’s ‘When We Cease To Understand The World’ were my introduction to quantum mechanics — the realm where science behaves very unscientifically indeed. (My reward for these efforts: a pre-enlightened viewing of ‘Oppenheimer’.) Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ‘Letters from an Astrophysicist’, on the other hand, catapulted me to outer space. In this compilation of correspondence with people from across the globe, America’s favourite astrophysicist uses characteristic flair and wit while dealing with questions of science, faith, philosophy and even politics. (My favourite letter from the book was from a pre-schooler complaining about the downgrading of our solar system’s erstwhile baby, Pluto, to ‘dwarf planet’. I’m so with him.)
CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING RINGS
These days, I get my space fix from Nasa’s Instagram feed, a conjunction made in heaven for arts majors of an astronomical bent. I’m heartbroken to hear that Saturn’s rings are losing material every year; the iconic rings will, unfortunately, disappear in time, pulled into the planet in a ‘ring rain’ caused by gravitational forces.

Which makes my viewing of the planet even more meaningful in a poetically irrational way. On a chilly evening in Bhimtal, not far from Nainital, I arrived with my companions to stargaze from what was publicised as a hillside observatory. What we found, instead, was an uninspiring one-storeyed camera store wedged between a temple and a chemist. A life-sized cut-out of an astronaut, with an empty space waiting for the heads of space enthusiasts, greeted us at the door. Our viewing slot announced, we climbed the shaky external staircase to access the terrace, which, reassuringly, had two impressive-looking telescopes waiting for us. What’s more, the technicians spoke knowledgeably about the celestial objects we were pointing the lenses at. (It proved too good to be true. One of our guides segued casually and earnestly from binary stars to chudails on amaavas raats.) Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was a treat to behold, as were Saturn’s magnificent rings. They’ll be gone in about 100 million years, it is estimated. And

I’ve only just said hello.

Rehana Munir is a Mumbai-based novelist and columnist