> BY GERALDS. HAWKINS

BY GERALDS. HAWKINS ^ f Rappahannock News Contributing Write ! * I chose to settle in Rappahannock County because of the land, arid also because of the clear night skies. You can see the stars from hare better than most other places in the world. v' I don’t know why Rappahannock is so fortunate. The county does lie off of the track of the plumes of pollution that come from the various industrial centers in the Midwest. Maybe also the oxygen from the tfrees in the Shenandoah National Park helps.

The desert in Egypt does not really compete for visibility because it usually has a dusty heat haze. In California, astronomers are plagued by neon lights and the smog is creeping up the mountains. Mount Wilson observatory was recently closed (fiywn for this very reason. In the Car North in Canada, although the

is clear, the Northern Lights get in2he way. >lAs a schoolboy in England my 3t$rgazing was hampered by clouds tS|d other things. I built a telescope

putting a lens in the end of a long $eve pipe, on a post in a pasture ijfcere we kept a cow. I could dimly sefe star clusters and distant galaxi«S- i«S•* One dark night, the lens dropped dut, and I couldn’t find it. I think the cow ate it. I followed that cow around for several days, but the lens never showed up.

Here on the farm, with powerful 10x64 binoculars, the Andromeda galaxy shows clearly in the east on a fall evening. The so-called “Seven Sisters” star cluster reveals 60 or more stars. Over the Blue Ridge Mountains in the spring 1 have seen tlie cone of the Zodiacal Light better than from any other location. That cone-shaped glow comes from sunlight scattered by dust in the solar system.

To the north on the horizon you cap see the glow from urban Front Royal, and to the west, over Skyline Olive you can see the loom of street lights from Luray. Downtown Culpeper shows to the southeast. When there are high clouds to the east, the lights of Washington, D,C., some 70 foiles away reflect with an orange -Inge.