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The Dartmouth
July 10, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

A Wayward Glance

Hale-Bopp comet is just an insignificant white speck in the sky, someone was quoted as saying in the Dartmouth. What's the big deal? It was the brightest comet in Earth's orbit in nearly 500 years.

I doubted anyone could appreciate a comet without sophisticated optics. Sure, spectacular cosmic pillars of gas, a nursery of stars among the stardust, are visible through the Hubble telescope now that it has 20-20 vision, but a person need not be an astronomer to appreciate the comet. Like clockwork, the comet fired in the northern sky at sunset and sunrise, increasing imperceptibly in intensity to sear brighter than any star. It's like a phantom hot air balloon with it's burner tracking across the sky.

Now it hurls out of view to return in 4,000 years. I figure the last to see it were the ancient Egyptians, so the comet's orbit is like a chord tying us to something as ancient as civilization's first glimmerings. Who would not count themselves as fortunate to recite, "...first star I see tonight I wish I may I wish I might..." and have their wish granted by such a comet.

Magical moments were had under the comets blaze, the white against the silky, darkly iridescent blue of the predawn. A bison galloped to strike a pose, and it was caught on film. I was crossing the Green, gazed at the comet and my eyes tracked a faint haze. Cirrus clouds? No, they glowed faintly. The wispy tendrils of "smoke" arched in the sky, buckling like a bolt of slightly subdued electricity across a Jacob's Ladder. Then the Big Green ignited the sky with a pyre of emerald green from a fantasy, the amorphous unearthly green, Baker's double out of the Emerald City of Oz. The Northern Lights had returned after a long absence. Apparently the Dartmouth mystique goes deeper than green eggs and ham.

Baker Tower, a faceless building to a freshman, accumulates character burned in your brain by the light of 1,000 sunsets, Dartmouth Undying like a vision. Which is your favorite sunset? The only sun pillar I have seen was at Dartmouth, and it has been my choice, a tall column of rose shooting to the sky.

Maybe emblazoned in your memory is a time when the sky let loose a cloudburst of late afternoon rain. Abruptly the shelf of clouds scudded away, revealing the precious Dartmouth bluebird sky under which Frisbee was born. (The first Frisbees were reported to fly in Hanover). A rainbow vaulted, unfurling in a dark liquid prism wall, IMAX for the ages, and the Technicolor campus springs from the gloom. Don't look to confine a rainbow to your film. Like swimming with a dolphin, you can't chase it, it must come to you of its own accord. I learned the recipe for a rainbow in Meteorology or "Clouds" class, and fickle rainbows don't always show.

Hale-Bopp comet. It vanishes with the seniors and memories remain. I walked across the green thinking of this and decided windows of opportunity open and close, the key is to stay attuned. As I thought the word, a star fell over Dartmouth Hall. Attuned. One of the coolest things I learned at Dartmouth is all the atoms of our body are stardust.

To quote The Church, "And it's something quite peculiar, something that's shimmering and white. It leads you here, despite your destination, under the milky way tonight."