With the publication by Bradt of her Tiffany Francis-Baker’s “The Dark Skies of Britain & Ireland; A Stargazer’s Guide,” she expands upon the astronomical elements she first touched upon in her 2019 book “Dark Skies,” and guides her readers into the delights of astronomy by leading through a tour of the best places to look up in wonder throughout the the scepter’d and emerald isles respectively.
As an author of exceptional skill, with an education in mathematics and engineering attained in part during his time as a cadet at West Point, and possessing a particularly quick, inventive, and curious mind. Edgar Allan Poe was in many ways an ideal personage for the age.
As mammals, we’re something of an anomaly. Most of our mammalian kindred species are well suited to, and indeed orient their lives around, the night. We humans, on the other opposable thumb equipped hand, have evolved – particularly in regard to our visual acuity – to fare much better in daylight. Therefore we have done all we can to make sure that those things that go bump in the night, as well as the more stealthy ones that don’t, aren’t concealed from us.
Ever since I was a boy, I have loved the night. Short-sighted as I was, I found that moving about in the darkness of my rural home village put matters on a more even playing field, as it were, with all those who could see much more clearly than I could in the daylight. In fact, mix a little fog into the darkness and I was in heaven; no one else could then see any better than I could.