The Milky Way with the constellation of Centaurus in the center. Image from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope.
At night we sleep on top of the boat. We put a mat out, and I have a sheet that I use. We stare up at the sky, and there’s no light pollution here, as you might imagine, having no electricity, so you can see pretty much every single star. It’s been very clear for us and so we’ve been able to do a lot of stargazing. We’ve seen a lot of shooting stars every night, and you can see the whole stretch of the Milky Way across the center of the sky, and the North Star very bright in the distance, and some of the planets as well. It’s a very peaceful way to sleep and it’s nice to wake up to see the stars in the middle of the night. When we go to bed it’s about 9 o’clock, and we wake up with the sun, about 5:15. Our day usually starts with collecting around 8.
As soon as I saw the pictures you sent of the boat, I hoped the night sky would be a part of the experience. And how about the sounds of the night? Re the village meeting–it’s deeply reassuring to imagine a group of people so connected to their environment. And that they all regarded their attendance and participation in the meeting as so important.
Kathy C.
Hi Kathy, thanks for all of your comments on the blog! The night sky was truly amazing, I’ve never seen anything like it (but of course I’ve never been so far from light pollution). The night sounds were different everywhere we went and changed according to the time of night. In the forest, the darkest hours were FULL of frog and insect sounds (and usually the voices of our never-sleeping guides), and the lighter hours were full of bird calls. On the boat, we heard birds at dusk and dawn, but were usually pretty removed from insect and frog calls, which were replaced by lapping water all night. I recorded some of these and will try to post them soon. The village meetings were a wonderful experience for the most part, but the one with Jinju was very difficult and ultimately extremely disappointing.
Susan
SubhanAllah (Glory be to God)! When I saw this picture, I first thought, “this has to be fake or photoshopped”. Wow, AllahuAkbar (God is Great)! I am always humbled to see pictures like this because I never get to see a sky like this where I live.
Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it! Keep the pictures coming!
among the milky wey there seems to be a path of solid earth
as though one could step right on top of it and start building a house, am I going crazy or what? you could see teh very intimate particles of dust,