Orion, Iran, and the stars of peace

I wrote the following article a week or so ago and it appeared on the editorial page of the New Bedford Standard-Times today. I don't usually mix astornomy and politics, but when it comes to war, or rumors of war . . . well, i just have to give my honest reaction . . . besides, it was kind of nice to have a positive interaction with an Iranian astronomer and find we were thinking along the same lines.

When I first saw this wonderful picture showing the stars of one of our most familiar constellations above the mountains, I thought of the New England poet, Robert Frost, who wrote so elegantly about Orion in his poem, "The Star Splitter." Frost wrote:

You know Orion always comes up sideways.

Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,

And rising on his hands, he looks in on me

Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something

I should have done by daylight, and indeed,

After the ground is frozen, I should have done

Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful

Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney

To make fun of my way of doing things,

Or else fun of Orion's having caught me."

Here, of course, Orion is not just flinging a leg up over the mountains – he would have done that hours before this picture was taken – but he did catch me unawares. When I saw this picture I assumed those were the White Mountains, or maybe the Rockies. Orion is so familiar to me – and to any American who takes a few moments to look at the night sky – that I forget that he is visible to people all over the world.

But the mountains he looks down on here are the ones we may be dropping bombs on soon if certain people in Washington get their way – the Alborz Mountains of Iran. And this picture was taken by an Iranian photographer, Babak Tafreshi, who is alsoEditor in chief at Nojum, the astronomy magazine of Iran. I first saw it on a NASA Web site called Astronomy Picture of the Day. The explanation with it was simple:

On January 25th, light from a first quarter Moon illuminated this dreamlike landscape looking across the rugged, snow-covered peaks of the Alborz Mountain Range in northern Iran. The stunning sky is filled with stars, including the yellow-tinged Betelgeuse at the shoulder of Orion. Sirius, alpha star of Canis Major and the brightest star in planet Earth's night, stands above and left of picture center. The eerie glow along the Haraz valley in the foreground is light from cars traveling a highway leading from Tehran to the Caspian Sea."

Just another beautiful landscape by moon and starlight? No. Not with the tensions between our two countries. Not with a bunch of tired old men and women, tied up in their own egos, so ready to get thousands more killed because they are too ignorant, too lazy, and too cowardly to sit down at the negotiating table and do the hard work that is always involved when people need to look honestly at themselves and at others and learn to live together.

The picture brought tears to my eyes, for I knew in that moment in Iran there was someone who could look at the stars and see all their beauty and promise. Perhaps he too thought of the day when men set aside their petty quarrels and realize they are part of a much larger picture and that destiny lay not in the silly squabbles that dominate the daily news, but in understanding their place in an incredibly complex and beautiful universe.

And perhaps he thought, as I do, that the stars connect us all – we emerged from the stars. The complex atoms that make up our bodies were formed inside a star. And as the stars of the constellation of Orion – a constellation appearing the mythology of many cultures throughout the world – looked down on us they know nothing of the silly lines we draw on maps that serve to divide us and our little territorial disputes where we hunger for the oil, or whatever, that is bounded by the lines around someone else's home.

So I wrote to Babak Tafreshi and asked if I could use his photograph in this article. His reply caught me again by surprise.

I like your idea of the article and it would be my pleasure to have my picture in the article.

"Our vision in photography is the unity which hides behind the nature of the night sky. We all see the same sky, the same beauty over Mosques, churches, temples, Alborz range in Iran or Rocky mountains in US. I have just started an international project called TWAN (The World At Night) which will focus on this idea by bringing photographers from different countries in a team to show our world in a peaceful new way. It will present the world's most highlighted sites at night with background of stars and celestial events, this will be a new approach to nations dialog. The project is very new and it will be online in few weeks.

There is some hope for mankind if we can only get our leaders to look up – to reach for the stars – instead of sending more people to wallow in the mud and blood.

Links related to this article:

For more of Babek Babak Tafreshi's. pictures:

http://www.dreamview.net/dv/new/index.asp

Astronomy Picture of the Day - http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/