Retired attorney Dick Roberts sent a reminder about the astronomical trifecta experienced in Wood County and other places during 2024, which we published recently.

The highlight would be the total solar eclipse last April.

I spent 69 years on the planet before seeing one. (I did not have a Lear jet to get to Nova Scotia.)

I have marveled at a few partial ones through the years, but they pale in comparison to that magical moment when the moon goes full knock out. The whole world seems to change eerily, as of by magic, and then in a few moments, it’s gone.

One of my childhood friends, with whom I have kept up over the years, made it to the last one in 2017 and wrote a detailed account of the planning, actual event and the huge traffic jam afterward. They had to drive a few hundred miles to get to a spot in the eclipse path.

So I was somewhat prepared. I just drove a few blocks which required no real planning.

Both of us had telescopes as teens, along with a third friend, and would camp in the backyard and stargaze.

Moons of Jupiter and rings of Saturn were favorites, along with sun spots and craters of the moon.

I’m sure at his rural home in the high plains of Colorado that the aurora borealis (northern lights) has appeared in his view often, but the one we witnessed in October in the Shenandoah mountains was our first.

Dick also captured it glowing over Lake Fork, as did others around here that night.

That was followed a few days later by the comet that I first viewed in the western sky, though it had also made an earlier appearance in the east.

That’s quite a triple header, especially with two of them experienced for the first time.

I have had the good fortune to view a few comets through the years, some spectacular, and others, like the much-anticipated return of Haley’s Comet, that were pretty much duds.

They seem to be about as difficult to predict as the weather.

We’ve also made one attempt to see the well-known and less celestial Marfa lights in West Texas, but no such luck.

Space exploration piqued my interest early on. Missing the live coverage of the first moon landing in 1969 is definitely on my list of regrets.

When our sixth grade art project was to be a toothpick sculpture, I attempted to build the Apollo  rocket launch gantry at the Kennedy Space Center, but could not get it to stand up. It, along with my grade, collapsed. Elmer’s glue doesn’t dry quickly enough.

I’m not sure if Super Glue was even around at that time. Can you imagine a bunch of sixth graders with toothpicks stuck to their fingers?