I’m lying on my back in the grass—cold, but not too cold. Just enough to cause fingers to numb slightly in fifteen minutes’ time. I hear a couple laughing as they walk somewhere behind me. A tall guy with a beard passes by, looks at me funny. A girl power walks across the courtyard, holding a plastic bag at the end of each arm. I see a jogger with a headband, unicolor in navy blue. I hear cars, trucks, buses, horns, and nineteen seconds of crosswalk beeping roughly every minute and a half.
Above, the bright light of Venus blurs behind a thin cloud layer, off to the right of my view. An almost perfect half moon—a first-quarter moon actually—is pretty much directly overhead, a bit right of center. Off to my left, the illuminated, curving spire of the MIT Chapel shines skyward, pointing to the pale red dot of Mars.
The first-quarter moon phase began today at exactly 3:41pm, EDT, Friday, March 30, 2012. It shines in front of the constellation Gemini, between the legs of the twins, Castor and Pollux of Greek mythology, high above the faint, sinking sparkle of Betelgeuse.
Summer just started in the northern hemisphere of the red planet, causing the Martian North Polar Cap to slim to a sliver—a tiny white hat on top of a round, horribly sunburned fat man.
It takes sunlight about six minutes to reach Venus.