As another Christmas approaches
with the speed of a Velociraptor on steroids, our minds inevitably turn to
robins... no - sorry, haven’t got any of those. Snow? No, SOL on snow too. So no
snowmen either then, I presume? Not as such. Mangers? Nah, not much call for those I’m afraid.
Stars? Ahh yes, now we do indeed have some of those. Thank goodness it was
getting rather tiresome and not a little worrying.
In fact... and this is a fact, not BS,
we have the best stars in the world. Period. Let me qualify that. You can see
the stars better from our house than anywhere else on earth. Truly. It’s all jolly
scientific but basically it is has to do with the elliptical angles of the
earth and at Sea Level, from the Southern Caribbean (which is where we are)
star gazing is about as good as it gets.
Ideally, if you are going to nitpick, you want to be located on the
North East tip of a southern Caribbean island and there again we are yelling
‘Bingo’ loudly, as we are right on the North Eastern tip of the island. Again, and
if you want to be really pedantic of course, if your island has mountains you need those to be behind you. Tick! This is important
because it means the winds don’t disturb the wind flow or your vision. Finally...
oh for god’s sake what now... you need to be devoid of any light pollution. Double
tick - it is as black as... well, black as the night around our house.
So there we are, you may think you’ve
seen stars but not like you see them here, so there is another good excuse to
come and see us. It looks like millions of stars shuffle onto the stage every
night to take a bow and make us all lower our jaws rapidly and reverentially whisper
‘wow’ but disappointingly... sometimes scientists are such bloody killjoys...
we can only see about 2,000 stars from any one location. Bugger! What is
baffling when you see them jammed together cheek by jowl in the night sky, is
that in reality they are on average twenty million, million miles apart... and
that’s an awful lot of noughts! It also reminds us neatly of what a tiny speck
we are, adrift in the Universe.
As you are all busy, I will keep this
mercifully short and just say that life goes on apace here. We are both more
busy here than we were in England, which wasn’t quite the plan but there you go!
If you want to make the gods laugh, tell them your plans. At least we still
have time occasionally to dance under the stars which is magical. Did you know
that at any one place on earth you can only see about 2,000 stars and... oh
shut up!
So we wish you and yours a wonderful,
joyous star-filled Christmas and a fabulous, rewarding New Year!
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