When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer

I came across this Whitman poem yesterday on the bus.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

That doesn't describe my view of professional astronomy, but certainly agree that all the analysis and study can take away a bit of the awe of just looking at the sky.

I spent the summer of 1993 in Socorro, New Mexico at the NRAO. Being out in the middle of nowhere, we had an absolutely phenomenal view of the night sky. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else. I actually saw the Milky Way for the first time other than in pictures. And we saw some great meteor showers. That's why a lot of us got into astronomy to begin with, I think, and like Whitman says, it was great to be able to just look at the sky again and to be reminded of that.