Sky and Telescope - April 2018 - 84

FOCAL POINT by Richard S. Wright, Jr.

My Plastic
Spaceship
A boy's lofty dreams are realized,
though not quite as he'd imagined.

A PR I L 2 018 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

It's also a time machine.
With it I can travel to the
distant past, to an age
when dinosaurs walked
the Earth or, with some
effort and care, to a
shadowy period before
our planet even existed.
red lights pulsating with the implied
power of my mighty craft. Our galaxy
arches overhead, and occasionally a
fellow traveler ﬂies by, be it a streaking
meteor, a comparatively slow-moving
satellite, or an airplane with other travelers heading to a more terrestrial destination. My course is celestial, though,
and to the music of Enya or some sci-ﬁ
soundtrack I sail off across an ocean so
vast few can comprehend it.

I am made of stardust, I think as I
marvel at how my craft's machinery
collects and records photons a million
years old or more. I ponder the duality that to me they are ancient in years
beyond counting, while from their
perspective they were created a moment
ago by some star many light-years away
and only just spanned this immense
distance.
Is it this crisscross of time streams
that gives rise to the fabric of the universe? Am I the universe too, the dust
or ashes of dead stars assembled here
on Earth in such a way that I can reﬂect
upon the universe, and myself, in such
a fashion?
Yes, I have a spaceship, and it's more
powerful than I ever imagined as a boy.
¢ RICHARD S. WRIGHT, JR., is a software developer at Software Bisque. See
his article on aperture masks on page 66
of this issue.

JASON A BBOT T

AS A YOUNGSTER in the late 1960s
and early '70s, one of my grandest
dreams about being a grownup was
living in the Space Age. I fantasized
about ﬂying cars and vacations on the
Moon while devouring endless episodes
of Space 1999, Star Trek, and Lost in
Space. Our nation was still sending men
to the Moon when a trip I took to the
planetarium in the ﬁrst grade sealed the
deal and left me with a hunger that I'd
never satisfy.
Today, alas, there is virtually no
chance I will ever drive a ﬂying car or
vacation on the Moon. But I have my
own spaceship, an enormously capable
one. It can carry me on voyages through
the solar system, across the galaxy, and
even into intergalactic space. It's also
a time machine. With it I can travel to
the distant past, to an age when dinosaurs walked the Earth or, with some
effort and care, to a shadowy period
before our planet even existed.
You see, at some point in my adult
life I became an astrophotographer.
Like many who are serious about such
a passion, I've built my own observatory under the dark skies of a remote
location - in my case in South Florida.
My observatory is my spaceship. It's
one of those domes that folds over and
slides to the side, and the whole thing
consists of the same plastic material
that comprised my children's backyard
playhouses.
Many a night I have lain down on
the ﬂoor beneath my dome and stared
up through the opening, as if through a
portal into outer space. At such times,
the equipment in the center of my ship
warbles and clicks in the faint glow of

Sky and Telescope - April 2018

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