Mystery behind the patches

 

 

A FEW days back on a dusky evening I was taking a stroll in the terrace after dinner. Time would be around 9.30 pm. Due to a sharp shower in the afternoon, all the floating dust particles in the air have settled down making the atmosphere clean. The day before was a new moon night. Whole sky was decked with millions of glittering stars. Even the Pole Star which generally shines faintly was clearly visible on the north. It was bringing back the memory of the lockdown period when the sky looked absolutely spic and span.

This part of the city is not yet highly populated; traffic is also less. Humming the tunes of a vintage movie song I was enjoying the beauty of our serene canopy. A bright star in the south western sky particularly caught my attention. It must have been twinkling in the same fashion since thousands of years, mused I. On a more intense glance it was found that the light emanating from the star had a special quality. It was frequently changing colors from red to blue to green with the twinkles. Obviously enchanted, I reasoned that this might be happening due to dispersion of light from a very far away source. At this point of time I had a very unusual experience. Out of nowhere, a tiny white patch suddenly appeared before the dazzling star. Did I see it correctly? Yes, there is no mistake. A small patch of whatever matter is seen near the heavenly body. What could it possibly be? First I thought it might be the condensed jet left by an airplane. But no trace of any flight could be located in the vicinity. The sky is so crystal clear that missing any blinking object is out of question at whatever distance it might have travelled. Could it then be the Milky Way that we used to observe in the village on autumn sky? No chance. Milky Way used to cover a much larger space than this tiny patch.

I thought to call my daughter. If she can fix the small telescope on the terrace, the mystery behind the white patch may be solved. Meanwhile, another patch similar to the first one appeared around the star Lubdhaka (Sirius) which is known as ‘Hunting dog of Kalpurush’ in India. What is happening? Are my decades old eyeballs hallucinating? And I was surprised to note that both the patches had started moving. That, at least, cleared a confusion. The patches cannot be constellation of stars - stars do not shift so fast on the sky. With utmost curiosity I started following the paths of the mysterious patches. Within moments, few more similar patches came up here and there before my wide open eyes, as if the stars were surfacing one by one in the evening sky. The patches kept on travelling…slowly…passing the by-lanes of planets and stars…until suddenly all of them got clustered to form a small piece of CLOUD!

So, that was the mystery hidden behind the white patches!! I was absolutely stunned to be the witness of such an amazing natural event. Rain clouds in the sky are a common sight, but how many have seen their actual formation, like me? A line from a Bengali song flashed in my mind that translates to say: ‘Many a times we enjoy the flowers, but seldom see them bloom!’