Part 4

Night Sky

Every night, when the sun goes down and the stars come out, the world completely changes. There are plants and animals that come out only at night. People too. And every night the sky puts on a show. Author Roxane Gay (Hunger), radio host David Greene (formerly of NPR’s Morning Edition), author and comedy writer Bess Kalb (Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, Jimmy Kimmel Live), photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva (National Geographic), an 11-year-old who’s afraid of the dark, and more join us as we explore our mysterious world at night.

Audio transcript

Celestial Navigation by Stokey Woodall and Byun Young Geun
Queen of the Night by Jo Falls and Emily Margarit Mason
Black by Aspen Mays
Moonlight by Balarama Heller

Video by Stephen Buchmann

Celestial Navigation

Story by Stokey Woodall / Artwork by Byun Young Geun

“I sailed a boat from Oslo, in Norway, to the British Virgin Islands via Antigua. And because there was no satellite information or stuff like that in 1978, we had to navigate with the stars. We sailed nearly four and a half thousand miles, all the way from Europe, on a 27-foot yacht just by using the stars. The sights that you get out there because there is no light pollution... You see the Milky Way, planets, meteor showers. It is as near to heaven as you’re ever going to get. I remember approaching Antigua. It’s one of the most spectacular sights I’ve ever seen. The moon was on the horizon in front of me, and the sun was on the horizon behind me. Even though we had a tough trip, stopping was actually a disappointment.” — Stokey Woodall, ship captain

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Queen of the Night

Story by Jo Falls / Artwork by Emily Margarit Mason

“Tohono Chul is a 49-acre desert preserve in northwest Tucson. Out here, in Tucson, people will plant what they refer to as “moon gardens.” It’s a garden where the flowers open at night. And in general, those flowers will tend to be white, which, of course, makes them look like the moon. Particularly, our night-blooming cereus, otherwise known as the Queen of the Night. The flower itself will take about four hours to fully open, and the petals will slowly unfurl. By the time the sun is coming up, those flowers are closing, and they’re done for the year. That’s it.” — Jo Falls, former director of education at Tohono Chul

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Black

by Aspen Mays

“I went to the desert in northern Chile, where the largest land-based telescopes in the world are. The air is so dry and so clear, you could see more stars than you’ve ever seen in your whole life. And I was so utterly unsatisfied with any picture I was taking of it. I went searching for other materials that had a quality of the darkness that got closer to that experience somehow. I used to teach at Ohio State, and the art department is right next to the geology department. They have a rock museum, where students can check out samples of rocks. That’s how I started looking at mica. That black, it’s almost a liquid blackness. It got closer to what it felt like to look at the sky.”

Moonlight

by Balarama Heller

The moon is woven into the everyday waking and sleeping reality of life on Earth. It speaks to all children and pulls at their curiosity about our place in the cosmos. The moon’s presence is an invitation to investigate our existential condition.

Video edited by Danielle Schneiderman and Balarama Heller. Music by Jay Israelson.

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