Mapping Out A Sky

Sondheim and spaceflight

Walt Whitman, upon hearing the learn’d astronomer arranging proofs and figures before him, slipped out of the lecture-room and into the mystical moist night-air. There, he look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

This week, four astronauts travelled to the far side of the Moon, passing behind it and farther from the rest of us than any human being has …