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While homebound communities, families and individuals ride out these turbulent times and medical professionals grapple with the 2020 viral pandemic, timely inspiration floats above us in star filled skies. The wonder of the night sky can easily be overlooked as we nestle inside searching for consolation from each other, keeping informed, monitoring our children’s education, preparing good meals,  watching TV, movies, board and card games. But even though travel to favorite destinations and social mixing may be temporarily restricted, adventures to stimulate the imagination are within easy reach.

Kanab’s Stellar Vista Observatory (SVO) invites you to consider the free family friendly activity of stepping outside on clear evenings as twilight descends to view the wonders of the cosmos. If you don’t own binoculars or an astronomical scope, start by simply contemplating the multitude of stars. You can view the Moon or Milky Way, become curious to learn the names and relative locations of constellations or planets. And this week is a very special one for planets! Here’s why.

Highly unusual planetary alignments are taking place this week that can provide memorable thrills for all ages. It is worthwhile to rise early and look to the southeast between 5:30 am and 6:30 am this week to see the spectacular conjunction of three planets in our solar system; Jupiter, Mars and Saturn.  From morning to morning the trio of brilliant objects will appear to pass extremely close to each other, even though their orbits hold them millions of miles apart!

A beautiful and powerful thing is going on in the western sky right now, something that everyone can see, weather permitting, with their own eyes. At evening time between 8:30 pm and 10pm, you can experience the brilliance of the planet Venus, and it’s exceptionally rare proximity to the cluster of young bright blue-white stars known as the Pleiades or “Seven Sisters”. 

Enjoy the following brief but inspiring message from retired professional astronomy interpreter and senior trustee with SVO, Von Del Chamberlain of Kanab.

The planet Venus is creeping up on the star cluster known as the Pleiades. Venus will appear to join this tightly-knit star group on the nights of April 2 and 3. This will be beautiful to our eyes (binoculars will help), but most important of all it can be a most provocative message to our minds.

The message comes to us through old traditions of the Pawnee Nation of North America. For those true Native Americans, the planet Venus was considered the mother of the human race and the Pleiades were symbolic of the significance of unity among the human family.

Go out and watch now and for two or three days in early April as the perceived mother of humanity moves into the family in the sky. Listen with your eyes as She, along with her celestial family shout down to us the message that we must be united as one family. Surely no more important memorandum is needed, all around the globe, right now. “WE, THE HUMAN FAMILY – ALL OF US – MUST LIVE THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY – IF WE ARE TO SURVIVE!

You can read more about this in the book Children of the Sky, by Von Del Chamberlain, available from Amazon, or visit www.childrenoftheskyvdc.com.

To find out exactly where to look for these wonders of the night, visit Kanab’s Stellar Vista Observatory online at www.stellarvistaobservatory.org or catch us on Facebook. In this unusual time of extreme social isolation, make a point to remember the often unnoticed but ever-present abundance of inspiration in the heavens above us.