Mojave Desert Skies: “My God. It’s Full of Stars!”
By Fredrick Gary Hareland, East Sierra Branch
“My God, it’s full of stars!” In MGM’s 2010 movie The Year We Made Contact, these were the last words received from Astronaut Bowman as he approached the 3-kilometer-long monolith orbiting between the USS Discovery and the planet Jupiter.
I hate to spoil his moment, but he could have seen as many stars on a typical clear night in California’s Mojave Desert.
Any person who has flown into or out of the Los Angeles International Airport at night knows why the stars are obscured from large cities and accentuated in small, remote communities. It’s light pollution. When you fly over a big city, the lights below create galaxies that outshine the celestial stars. This explains why astronomers generally locate their telescopes far from civilization.
Until I moved to Ridgecrest in 1983, the most stars I ever glimpsed at one time hung over the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a moonless night while I was serving onboard USS McMorris, DE-1026, a small destroyer escort. The view was truly phenomenal and something I’ll never forget. Yet when I came to the Indian Wells Valley and looked heavenward, I found myself mesmerized by the number and brilliance of the twinkling stars. It would seem like tens of thousands, as though it would take eternity to experience them all and not simply one human lifetime. Once I visited the nearby Rademacher Hills south of Ridgecrest for a spectacular meteorite shower fest. I’ve attended star parties and marveled at the world that opens up at the squint of an eye.
I’ve since learned that according to one report from the National Geographic¸ only about 3000 stars can be seen with the naked eye on a clear night. That doesn’t change the effect the stars have on me. Besides, I read somewhere else that the cup of the Big Dipper, Ursa Major, alone holds a huge number of visible galaxies and just one of those contains 250 billion suns.
People like the China Lake Astronomical Society members focus on the science – the how rather than the why. But I stargaze to observe the beauty and majesty of the creation and to contemplate God’s greatness next to man’s puniness in the scheme of things.
Of you can tear yourself away from the big city on a clear moonless night, you might hear yourself saying, “My God, it’s full of stars!” just like Astronaut Bowman did – but without a disappearing act!
A stalwart explorer and chronicler of land, oceans and skies, Gary Hareland
founded the Upper Mojave Desert branch of the Mars Society.
He served as president of the East Sierra Branch until shortly before
his death in 2015.His love of all creation will never leave us.
We share this essay with you as part of his enduring legacy.