Mr Palomar (Vintage Classics) Read Online Free PDF Page B

regular in its complicated habits: it never fails to show up for an appointment and you can always wait for it at the appointed spot; but if you leave it in one place you always find it next in another, and if you recall its face turned in a certain way, you see it has already changed its pose, a little or a lot. In any case, following it steadily, you do not realize that it is imperceptibly eluding you. Only the clouds intervene to create the illusion of a rapid dash and rapid metamorphoses, or rather, to underline vividly what would otherwise escape the eye.
    The cloud dashes. Gray at first, it becomes milky and shiny, the sky behind it has turned black, it is night, the stars are lighted, the moon is a great, dazzling mirror that flies. Who would recognize in this moon the one of a few hours ago? Now it is a lake of shininess, spurting rays all around, brimming in the darkness with a halo of cold silver, and flooding with white light the streets of the night-walkers.
    There is no doubt that what is now beginning is a splendid winter night of full moon. At this point, assured that the moon no longer needs him, Mr Palomar goes home.

The eye and the planets
     
    When he learns that this year, for the entire month of April, the three “external” planets, visible to the naked eye (even his, nearsighted and astigmatic) are all three “in opposition” and therefore visible for the whole night, Mr Palomar rushes out on to the terrace.
    Because of the full moon the sky is light. Mars, though close to the great lunar mirror flooded with white light, advances imperiously with its stubborn radiance, its thick, concentrated yellow, so different from all the other yellows of the firmament that it has finally been agreed to call it red, and in moments of inspiration really to see it as red.
    Moving your gaze down, continuing eastwards an imaginary arc that should link Regulus with Spica (but Spica can hardly be seen), you encounter, quite distinct, Saturn, with its chilly whitish light, and still farther down there is Jupiter, in the moment of its greatest splendor, a vigorous yellow with a hint of green. The stars all around have paled, except Arcturus, which shines with a defiant air, a bit higher to the east.
    To enjoy most fully the triple planetary opposition it is necessary to procure a telescope. Mr Palomar, perhaps because he bears the same name as a famous observatory, can boast some friendships among astronomers, and he is allowed to put his nose beside the eyepiece of a 15cm telescope. It is rather small for scientific research; but, compared to his eyeglasses, it makes quite a difference.
    For example, in the telescope Mars proves to be a more perplexed planet than it appears to the naked eye: it seems to have many things to communicate and can bring only a small part of them into focus, as in a stammered, coughing speech. A scarlet halo protrudes around the edge; you can try to tuck it in by regulating the screw, to emphasize the crust of ice of the lower pole. Spots appear and vanish on the surface like clouds or rents in clouds; one becomes stabilized in the shape and position of Australia, and Mr Palomar is convinced that the more clearly he sees that Australia the more the lens is focused, but at the same time he realizes that he is losing other shadows of things that he thought he saw or felt obliged to see.
    In other words, it seems to him that if Mars is the planet about which, ever since the days of Schiaparelli, so many things have been said, causing alternate illusions and disappointments, this fact coincides with the difficulty of establishing relations with the planet, as with a person of difficult character. (Unless the difficulty of character is all on Mr Palomar’s side: he tries in vain to escape subjectivity by taking refuge among the celestial bodies.)
    Quite the opposite is the relationship he establishes with Saturn, the most exciting planet to the person viewing it through a telescope: there it is,