Maybe from the 4,000 photos in my “Sky” photo album or the fact that I have always enjoyed researching deep-sky objects, you’d think that I am a sky enthusiast. However, I did not realize how much joy I find in the objects in the sky until this summer.
With the intention of casually window-shopping and walking next to the Potomac River during sunset, my boyfriend and I spent a day near the Georgetown waterfront. As tired as I was after biking for an hour on the uneven streets of D.C. from the National Gallery of Art to Georgetown, I still managed to enjoy the coral-colored sunset with hues of blue, leaning against the railing to breathe it in. Then the planes started, one every five minutes, bigger than the toy-sized specks I’m used to.
“Do you wanna know what plane it is?”
After hearing this, my eyes lit up amidst fatigue. “Let’s see!”
He pulled out Flightradar24 on his phone and zoomed in on Georgetown. Yellow trajectories braided past each other in real time, seemingly overlapping with each other but also not, creating a tiny chaos of a kaleidoscope. The Ronald Reagan National Airport was just downriver. For each plane that flew by, we clicked on it in the app, comparing its airline company with its tail and body and exclaiming at the origins.
“This one’s from Houston!”
“This tail’s definitely Southwest.”
“Let me guess... I think that one’s from San Diego!”
Just like that, we spent half an hour plane-spotting and sounding like kids screaming as each airplane flew by. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt a ridiculous, perfect satisfaction as parts of my curiosity were filled.
We chased that feeling. After Georgetown, we decided to visit more plane spotting areas. From the Donald D. Engen Observation Tower for the Dulles International Airport to the Thomas A. Dixon, Jr. Aircraft Observation Area for Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, every experience was so unique on its own. Sometimes we brought out binoculars, other times we took selfies with the planes because they skimmed so low over us while landing. Of course, the skyline behind them was always so beautiful.
Another sky activity that had been on my bucket list for years but I finally got to accomplish was stargazing. Too many movies have the scene where the main character sits on a hill, looks up at the sparkly night sky and maps each star to a person or a promise. So then, we hit the road and drove to Assateague Island — according to the light pollution map, it’s one of the only locations in Maryland where light pollution is a light blue instead of bright purple. As soon as we entered the island, everything was pitch black. The only lights I could see were the distant, scattered city lights from Ocean City.
I was never afraid of the dark, until I stepped out of the car and realized there’s an entire ocean a few hundred meters away, and everything beside me was swallowed in darkness. Suddenly, I felt minuscule, completely surrounded by nature and its vastness and beauty.
Going one step at a time on the beach (I felt like if I took a wrong step, it would tilt me off the edge of the map), I looked up at the night sky. It’s true — hundreds of stars of different sizes and brightnesses and temperatures shone at the same time. Together, they held so much power in capturing all of our attention and lighting up the sky with the moon, but soon we’d notice that they were too far away and their brightness couldn’t reach where we were standing. Maybe that means something; maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I was just too immersed in this moment between blinding darkness and blinding stars, and the meaning was simply being there.
Linda Huang is a sophomore majoring in Biomedical Engineering from Rockville, Md. She is a Magazine Editor for The News-Letter.