I live in a building filled with the most interesting and accomplished people. Photographers, physicians, and psychoanalysts; writers, artists, judges, lawyers, stock brokers, editors, accountants—and that’s only the handful of people I know.

Stan Honda is the photographer I have in mind. He has photographed the Northern Lights and so much else. A few days ago, he sent along a batch of photos that he took of the skies over Manhattan at this utterly dreadful time in which so many of us are dying so terribly and so suddenly. Honda has captured a magical moon, bright, distant stars, and even some visible planets—a vast canvas of witnesses which silently afford us a glimpse of eternity, as we come and we go.

A crescent moon appears to flow through the ether (a cloud) with Jupiter and Mars (above the moon) as the three rise in the early morning hours. By Stan Honda.

Mars and Saturn on the left and Jupiter high up rise over east side buildings, annotated. By Stan Honda

Venus makes a close approach on April 1 to the Pleiades star cluster, something that happens once every 8 years. By Stan Honda.