Civilization is at its best when it occasionally remembers to look up.
This weekend, France is holding its annual Nuits des Étoiles — the Night of the Stars — with hundreds of public gatherings devoted to the deeply unproductive business of staring into space.
Across the country, telescopes are being carried into parks, village squares and observatories. Volunteers are helping people find planets, constellations, distant galaxies and the first Perseid meteors, while this year’s gatherings also offer a little preparation for the solar eclipse arriving on August 12.
There are no metrics attached to any of this.
No one is optimizing Saturn.
Andromeda has not been asked to increase engagement.
For a few summer evenings, people simply gather in the dark and are reminded that the world above them is considerably larger than the one glowing in their hands.
Some national traditions deserve exporting.
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