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very sharp, white, the outlines of the sphere and of the ring precise; a faint parallel, a zebra striping marks the sphere; a darker circumference distinguishes the edge of the ring. This telescope hardly picks up any other details and accentuates the geometrical abstraction of the object; the sense of an extreme difference, rather than diminishing, becomes more prominent now than to the naked eye.
    The fact that an object so different from all others, a form that achieves the maximum strangeness with the maximum simplicity and regularity and harmony, is rotating in the sky cheers life and thought.
    “If the ancients had been able to see it as I see it now,” Mr Palomar thinks, “they would have thought they had projected their gaze into the heaven of Plato’s ideas, or in the immaterial space of the postulates of Euclid; but instead, thanks to some misdirection or other, this sight has been granted to me, who fear it is too beautiful to be true, too gratifying to my imaginary universe to belong to the real world. But perhaps it is this same distrust of our senses that prevents us from feeling comfortable in the universe. Perhaps the first rule I must impose on myself is this: stick to what I see.”
    Now it seems to him that the ring is swaying slightly, or the planet is, within the ring, and both seem to rotate in place. In reality it is Mr Palomar’s head that is swaying, as he is forced to twist his neck to fit his gaze into the eyepiece of the telescope; but he takes care privately not to deny this illusion, which coincides with his expectation as it does with natural truth.
    Saturn really is like this. Since the Voyager 2 expedition Mr Palomar has read everything written about the rings: they are made of microscopic particles; they are made of boulders of ice separated by abysses; the divisions between the rings are furrows in which the satellites rotate, sweeping away matter and piling it up at the sides, like sheepdogs circling around the flock to keep it compact. He followed the discovery of intertwined rings which were then proved to be simple circles, much more thin; and the discovery of the opaque streaks arranged like the spokes of a wheel, later identified as icy clouds. But the new information does not deny this essential figure, no different from what was first seen by Gian Domenico Cassini in 1676, when he discovered the division between the rings that bears his name.
    For the occasion a scrupulous person like Mr Palomar would naturally have consulted encylopedias and manuals. Now Saturn, an ever-new object, presents itself to his gaze, renewing the wonder of the first discovery, and prompting the regret that Galileo with his blurred spyglass was able only to conceive a confused idea, of triple body or of sphere with two handles, and when he was coming close to understanding how it was made, his eyesight failed and everything plunged into darkness.
    Staring at a luminous body too long tires the vision: Mr Palomar closes his eyes; he moves on to Jupiter.
    In its majestic but not heavy bulk, Jupiter displays two equatorial stripes like a scarf decorated with interwoven embroideries, of a pale bluish-green. Effects of immense atmospheric storms are translated into a calm, orderly pattern, an elaborate composure. But the real pomp of this luxurious planet are its glittering satellites, all four now in sight along an oblique line, like a scepter shining with jewels.
    Discovered by Galileo, who named them Medicea sidera , “Medici stars”, rebaptized a little later with Ovidian names – Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto – by a Dutch astronomer, Jupiter’s little planets seem to cast a final glow of neoplatonic Renaissance, as if unaware that the impassive order of the celestial spheres had dissolved, because of the work of their discoverer himself.
    A dream of classicality enshrouds Jupiter; gazing at it through the telescope, Mr Palomar awaits an Olympian transfiguration. But he is unable to keep the image