How to use rainbows, clouds and stars as clocks and compasses

Apr 15, 2024

We see the sky every day. Or do we? Familiarity breeds not contempt, but disinterest. Modern lifestyles relegate the sky until it sulks quietly in the background, which I think is a terrible waste.

We’d do much better to view the sky as a dome full of characters that are keen to reveal things. Look carefully and the sun, moon and stars will tell you the time, offer directions, forecast the weather and test your senses, free of charge. There is more fascinating information to be deduced from a single rainbow than you’ll find on most phone apps.

John Keats accused Isaac Newton of killing the poetry of a rainbow by “reducing it to a prism”. The opposite is true: we find beauty when we