I’ve always loved that scene in Harold in Maude where Maude tells Harold, “The earth is my body. My head is in the stars.” That quote popped into my mind when I found Stellarium, a program that basically turns your computer into a planetarium.
I’ve always been interested in astronomy, but I get overwhelmed when I look up and try to figure out what’s what. Stellarium puts things in perspective quickly. You tell it where on planet Earth you’re viewing from, and it configures the sky as it appears. You just need to figure out if you’re looking north, south, east or west and line it up to figure out what’s what up there. On my MacBook Pro screen, it’s pretty stunning. The sky moves in real time, and you can speed it up if you want to watch the moon rise and set or see the planets move across the sky. It’s definitely worth checking out …
And what better way to finish than with another quote from Maude …
“The stars are shining right now. We just can’t see them. Just another instance of all that’s going on that is beyond human perception.”