In search of stars and a cure for night pain| Top Vip News

For millennia, to be human is to have contemplated a night sky full of stars and to have dreamed. The stars have been fundamental for both religions and science. They have fueled the verses of poets and the research of physicists. They have been our guide to time and space, essential for navigation and calendars. Looking up at the night sky has been a search for meaning.

These bright celestial objects have also illuminated language. We talk about having dreamy eyes, having star-crossed lovers and things written in the stars. People who are successful are stars in their fields. And when we are ambitious, we shoot for the stars.

But, almost without comment, the majority of the world’s population – those who live in urban conglomerates – have lost the stars. Chances are, if you look up tonight, all that will be visible is a semi-dark fog reflecting the electric lights of the cityscape. Starlight, which takes millions of years to reach us from the infinite beyond, is blocked in the last milliseconds of its journey by light “pollution” from homes, parking lots, office buildings and streetlights. . For most humans today, the ocean of spilled milk and glitter – the real night sky – is something they have heard about, rather than seen firsthand. Astronomers have even coined a phrase to refer to the “night pain” phenomenon, noctalgia, because it is painful to lose the stars.

So imagine our sense of awe when our small group of astro-adventurers gazed into a deep black sky, foregrounded by a dense forest of twinkling jewels. The breath caught in the throat. Tears threatened the eyes, partly because of the winter cold, but also because when faced with beauty on this scale, the body can’t help but react viscerally.

Our group of seven tourists gathered next to the ruins of the 15th-century Trevejo fortress on Spain’s western border with Portugal, nestled between a range of hills called Sierra de Gata. It took an effort to get there. The area is more than 300 kilometers from the capital, Madrid, and there is no airport or major train station in the surrounding area.

There was something atavistic about the countryside around Trevejo; a place of olive groves and infinite horizons. We count more bulls than people. It was early December when we visited and the nights were freezing. We wore waterproof boots, hats and warm gloves. But even then, the cold seeped into the bones. But far from being a distraction, this bodily discomfort was transformed into clarity; a sense of being alive more vital than the norm in our everyday urban lives.

We enjoy the magnificence of the Milky Way with the naked eye. It was impossible to raise your face towards the starry canopy and not feel your soul rise with it, even if, like me, you are not so convinced of souls in general. The night sky is a sacred place and it felt almost blasphemous to remain impassive before it. There was comfort here for anyone who felt miserable and abandoned.

Representational image. (Photo credit: Uefeyik via Wikimedia Commons 4.0)

Our leader on this getaway was a small local group, Canopea (who specialize in astrotourism). A husband and wife team dragged two giant telescopes to the rocky outcrop on which the ruins of Trevejo Castle clung. Through them we delight in the lunar craters and even the magical rings of distant Saturn. In this space there were no regrets or anxieties because the glory of the present occupied all of our mental space. You can’t look at Jupiter’s moons and worry about taxes at the same time.

An hour and a half into this immersive real-life planetarium, the Canopea team conjured up a jar of hot chocolate. Sitting under the Milky Way with a cup of hot chocolate is a greater luxury than any material possession I can think of.

The area around Trevejo is at approximately a level three on the nine-level Bortle dark sky scale, a numerical measure that quantifies the interference caused by light pollution on the observability of celestial objects. A rating of one is equivalent to the darkest skies available on Earth, while city center skies are generally rated as nine.

There is a growing body of scientific research into the devastating ecological and health impacts of light pollution, which may rival those of better-known environmental problems such as air and water pollution. The loss of the night sky impacts humans’ circadian rhythms, causing sleep and mental disorders, as well as altering animal migration patterns.

But on an even deeper level, to lose the stars is to lose some of the magic of the universe; something that has connected all of humanity as we take refuge under the same skies, looking up and imagining what lay beyond.

Spending time under a truly starry night in Trevejo was more rejuvenating than a visit to an expensive detox spa. And in the future, I’m going to abandon gastrotourism for astrotourism. The feast of the stars is lighter on the wallet and on the waist.