Later that night I would look up meteor sightings on the Internet and see that other people had witnessed my meteor from Texas to Tennessee and Louisiana to Missouri. Its timeless life spent wandering the solar system flaming out in a few seconds over half the country. I was exhilarated. I was amazed. I was humbled.

People have looked towards the night sky and seen the story of their gods drawn out on a vast canvas; they have pointed at starry phenomena as bringers of good fortune and bad. By the sixteenth century the art of glass grinding to manufacture lenses enabled a few patient souls to begin mapping the heavens, but it has only been in the past half-century or so that we have begun to grasp just how truly vast space is. These revelations have unseated some of humanity’s privileged view of itself, pointing to the fact that not only was the astronomer alone in a very dark field—but that the whole planet was spinning around a huge expanse of nothing with very little around it for company.

Some people find this observation unsettling or even abhorrent, much the way coming upon a dozen pairs of eyes in the night reflecting the beam of your flashlight can be to a lonely man with a telescope. But to me, it is a great source of comfort and even joy. How fortunate we are to have this little corner in the great darkness, how privileged that the symphony of dust, time and gravity has made us a home from which to look skyward. When that meteor flared itself out before me on a solitary dirt road in north Louisiana, it occurred to me that I might have just seen the most spectacular sight of my life. It was a rare, flaming reminder of how extraordinary our existence is and how everyday we should be grateful for all the unparalleled beauty it displays for us, even if sometimes being alone in the dark feels a little scary.

There are two large, annual meteor showers in North America. In peak viewing conditions these showers can put on a spectacular show. Sadly, last December’s Geminids and this summer’s Perseids fell during a full moon which made the sky too bright to see most of the meteors. But, mark down a few days in the middle of December and August next year when both showers are likely to be impressive. More information is available at: stardate.org/nightsky/meteors.

2011 Geminids Peak— December 13-14

2012 Geminids Peak— December 12-14

2012 Perseids Peak— August 12-13

The twenty-ninth annual Deep-South Regional Star Gaze will be held between October 26 and 30 at the Feliciana Retreat Center outside of Norwood, La. This event attracts amateur and professional astronomers from all over the region. It is a great opportunity to see some impressive telescopes and get a glimpse of distant objects in the heavens. Information and reservations are available at stargazing.net/dsrsg.

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