Cosmic Religiondesire to understand it better, might be thought of as the high-
minded benefi t of ancient alchemy.
Spirituality of science
It was hardly alchemy, but for me, a sense of such wonder
became a part of my appreciation of science as a result of an
undergraduate astronomy project. The aim of the exercise
was to estimate the heights of mountains on the moon. This
involved taking photographs of the lunar surface and measur-
ing the lengths of the shadows that fell across its cliffs, peaks,
valleys and plains. Calculating the height of the sun above the
horizon, from the position of the mountain in question and
the time of the photo, revealed something of our natural sat-
ellite’s geography. My efforts were, of course, utterly trivial in
the grand scheme of things. Today, lasers and radio waves are
bounced off these grey peaks and can determine their eleva-
tion within meters. However, the exercise was worthwhile, even
seminal, for me inasmuch as the thing I remember most was the
experience itself.
The photos had to be taken in the early hours of winter morn-
ings, when the sky was clear, the moon was high and light
pollution was low. Arising at 3 a.m. on dark, frosty mornings
clothed the project with a sense of expectation: it reminded
me of monks who say the offi ce of Matins at similar hours as
the people around sleep. Then there was the business of staring
onto another world. The moon is a high-contrast place: with
no obscuring atmosphere and pitted like pumice, it feels close
through even a relatively low-powered telescope. Thomas
Traherne imaged a ‘celestial stranger’ coming to earth and being
amazed at its beauty: ‘Verily this star is a nest of angels!,’ he has
his visitor muse. ‘This little star so wide and so full of myster-
ies! So capacious and full of territories, containing innumerable
repositories of delight when we draw near!’ The same sentiments
occurred to me during my lunar observations. Not that we were
simply gawping at it. The project cultivated a methodological