I got up this morning at my usual 3 am, and wandered, bleary-eyed, into the bathroom for my morning shower (I'm only truly awake after this). Just as I was reaching for the light switch, I noticed a distinct flicker in the shadows on the wall near the switch. My slightly paranoid chaparral-trained mind immediately translated “flicker” into “fire” – but the color (a lovely blueish-white) was all wrong for that. There are no artificial lights of any kind in our bathroom other than the main incandescent lights, so I had no ready explanation for the flickering. As I watched, the flickering repeated. Where was it coming from?
With a little investigation, I figured it out. Looking out our small, high bathroom window, I could see a clear, moonless sky with a high horizon defined by the surrounding hills and our pine trees. Then I noticed that one particularly bright star (I couldn't see enough of the sky to tell which star it was) was placed right at the edge of the pine silhouette – and the pines were moving about because of a light wind. The star provided a nice point source of light, which made the pine tree shadows on my bathroom wall reasonably well-defined even though the pines were over 100 feet from my window. And my eyes were sufficiently dark-adapted to let me see those shadows produced by the light of a single star. Amazing imaging instruments we have in our head!
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