Happy Halloween! said the Sun
(and you thought the Moon was scary)…
“Happy Halloween!" said the Sun
The world blinked at a pumpkin in the sky
Which winked back, its humor beaming bright.
Awestruck as storms performed on high,
We looked for solace in comforts of the night.
The dominion which astronomy has always held over the minds of men is akin to that of poetry; when the former becomes merely instructive and the latter purely didactic, both lose their power over the imagination.
Garrett Serviss, Curiosities of the Sky (from Project Gutenberg)
Serviss published Curiosities in 1909, pondering why certain nebulae or ‘stars’ had such strange ‘roads of light’ features, and other remarkable oddities.
A couple decades later, Edwin Hubble proved at least some of those oddities were actually other galaxies. He would have been a 19 year old basketball player at the University of Chicago when the book first came out.
Wondering if Hubble ever read Serviss’ book. Certain neither ever saw the Sun smile this way.
