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The Milky Way from Étoile-Saint-Cyrice. France, in 2016.
Canon 400d DSLR on a fixed tripod
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" Ageing is a most surprising event. We all know it's happening to us, from the moment we become sentient to the moment we no longer are. So why the surprise?
Well, each of us is the centre of our own story and in the day to day hub-bub of delivering our unique role in the universe, we lose sight of the passage of time.
For much of life, time is experienced as a series of events: births, marriages and deaths being the 'big three'. We also split time into zones, Pre-school, School, University, Work and Retirement. We seldom think of time as a finite resource to be used with care and never squandered. Perhaps we can only move effectively through the 'now space' of our lives, if we relegate time to the mechanical beat of 'before and after'.
Time's best trick is to pretend it advances linearly. Sure, the way we measure it, the steady tick of the metronome, makes it seem that any second is like any other. But, I'm pretty sure that since my seventy-fifth birthday, the passage of time is accelerating as I decelerate in almost every other possible way.
'Age' doesn't have to mark time with 'decline' and in some areas, just like an ageing Camembert, I have matured. This is why the prudent ageing gentleman should always wear stronger smelling cologne, post 70th birthday!
The above photograph was taken in 2016 from Olly Penrice's balcony looking west, just after sunset. Quite an inexpensive camera and lens combination being used with enthusiasm rather than expertise. Nearly ten years on I have more expensive cameras , lenses, software and other 'techy gee-gaws' to play with. As I am a bit more experienced in astrophotography, I thought I would dig in the archive to find the data from 2016 and give it the 2025 data processing treatment.
Olly gave me my first lesson in processing digital data for astro-photography and from the week spent with him, my hobby and interest have developed. Both Anita and I remember the week we spent with Olly and Monique with great happiness.
When I looked at the image I could see the Milky Way rising above the trees, sense the salamander on the steps, hear the boar moving in the dark and smell the wood burning on the fire. Memories involve all our faculties and can be happy and sad simultaneously!
