Betelgeux

It’s a beautiful, mild, starry night. A bright moon in the west-south-west is not obscuring the stars of the southern sky. The great triangle formed by Betelgeux, Procyon and Sirius is the most distinctive feature in the sky, as clear as I’ve ever seen it. Rigel is very bright too.

Naomi and I stand in the field looking for shooting stars, wondering why the farm at Wood Dalling seems so much better lit than it used to. In fact the general level of background light seems higher than when we first moved here, although there has been no significant development. I hope it’s just the brightness of the moon reflecting off encroaching cloud cover.

As we go inside, I recall reading that Betelgeux is 25 million times bigger than the sun.