The app said clear. It said clear all week. You packed the car, drove the hour out past the last streetlight, got the scope levelled and the eyepieces laid out in the cold, and then, on schedule, the cloud arrived. THE FORECAST, arched across an engraved star-atlas plate in the wide capitals of a scholarly chart. And along the ruled footline below, the only honest reading anyone in this hobby has ever had: CLOUDY, AS ALWAYS. The joke is drawn completely straight, which is the whole trick. A solid chart ring of degree ticks and stars. A refractor on its tripod inside it, pointed up, ready. And one long band of cloud drifting across in front of the lens, the first thing your eye finds. There is no comic font and no wink. It is set with the gravity of a 17th-century atlas, and the punchline is delivered flat.
Soft and cozy with a hood for the drive home from a clouded-out session.
Only one kind of person finds this funny, and they will find it very funny. Which makes it the rare astronomy gift that proves the giver was paying attention.
Clear skies. Any night now.
