The Small Lights In The Black Sky

When the day ends and the sky becomes black, you can see them: very many small white lights, high above you. People have looked up at them and asked what they are for as long as there have been people. Here is what they are: each one is a sun.

Why they look small

Many of them are bigger than the sun that is near us, but they are very, very far from here. Light is the quickest thing that exists, and light from the nearest one needs more than four years to go from it to your eyes. Because of this, when you look at these lights, you are not seeing them as they are now: you are seeing them as they were, years before now. Looking up is looking back through time.

Why their light moves

The small lights look like they become stronger and less strong, quickly, many times. The suns are not doing this. The air is. Their light goes down through very much moving air before it touches your eyes, and the moving air pushes the light a very small amount, to one side and to another side. Above the air, where the up goer goes, the lights do not move at all.

The pictures people drew

People in all countries and at all times have looked up, drawn lines between the lights, and seen things in them: animals, people, tools, gods. They told stories about these pictures, and used them to know where they were going when they were far out on the big waters.

You are made from them

Inside these suns, small atoms are pushed into each other and become bigger kinds of atoms. When a very big sun dies, it explodes, and the atoms it made go out into the black. Long before the sun that is near us existed, other suns lived, made atoms, and died. The atoms in your body — in your blood, in your bones, in your hair — were made inside them. When you look up at the small lights, you are looking at the kind of place you were made.