住むならどこがいいですか?

The planisphere was my treasure. By turning the top wheel
around and alighning the date and time scales on the base
and the top, one could see which stars and constellations
would be visible in the sky. Shown in an elliptical window
was a map of the night sky at any given moment from a
specific location. I would imprint the image of the present
starry heavens in my mind and later gaze up at the night
sky, humming the mysterious names of the stars to myself.
The other recent day, guided by what the screen showed,
I searched the eastern sky. There it is. The first magnitude
star shining faintly on the dull celestrial sphere must be
Ｖega in the Ｌyra constellation. I had given up on seeing it
from the city centre. Then, shifting my gaze, there was
Altair in the costellation Aquila, twinkling above the silhoue-
tte of an apartment building of Shin-Urayasu. I stood still
for a moment, feeling like I was meeting for the first time
in a long time, old friends who knew me well. Even while I
was unaware of their presence, they must have been shin-
ing from afar. Among the stars in the sky that are as num-
berless as the grains of sand on the seashore, there is one
shining towards me. Vega is twenty five lightyears from
Earth. With my aged eyes, I am catching the light that left
the star when I was just at the age twenty five years less.
The starry sky, vast beyond imagination and filled with dark
energy, is not unchanging. The Earth's axis rotates slowly
like a top and the point in the sky it directs to shifts gradu-
ally. About twelve thousands years from now, Vega will be-
come the North Star. It seems that I have to warn Altair.
If he is complacent thinking that the belief meeting with
Vega once a year is enough, he will end up being just one
of the stars that circle around her. Looking up at the stars
and letting your imagination fly, you will feel that you are a
very tiny piece of the universe.

>>252 匿名さん

読めないくせにナマ言うねwww