Seizing the night

Photo: Finn Tranter

After several months of living in the constant light of big cities, we are finally back in our house in the small village of Antraigues in the south of France.

We definitely miss the hectic pulse of city life, but here in the quiet Volane valley, surrounded by dark mountains, we have at least regained the nights without any light pollution.

Thousands of stars show themselves.

Last night we stood on a grass slope outside the village and watched the familiar constellations rising - the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and the square of Pegasus. The longer we stood looking upwards, the more stars came out from the darkness. Their light has traveled so long to reach us that we were literally looking into the past - and some of the stars we looked at have probably stopped existing a long time ago.

Carpe Diem is a well-known expression, but on a night like this, Carpe Noctem felt equally important. Seize the night, while you still can.

And here is the thing about that last part.

We really strained our eyes to find the faint little smudge of the Andromeda galaxy - more than two million light-years away, and the farthest object you can see with the naked eye. We have found it many times in our younger days, just over the stars Mirach and Mu in the Andromeda constellation.

But it was nowhere. Not even the tiniest speck.

Since an entire galaxy the size of our own Milky Way probably does not just disappear overnight, the only explanation had to be the night blindness you can develop when you get older.

We gave up in the end. And it actually felt like something important was taken away from us.