Clouds are an under-appreciated phenomenon. We are probably the only species capable of paying attention to, and appreciating, them, yet were rarely do so. Most of us really only pay close attention when we’re in the window seat of an airplane. Understandable, since during take off there’s nothing else to look at besides the safety instruction card (which you should probably read anyway).
Whilst only made of mere water vapour, clouds are very nice things. We have a tendency to think of them as 2D objects, just a flat layer of white hovering at a constant height above our Earth. But when you have some time, have a good look. In the right circumstances, the cloud will burst into 3D before your eyes. It’s really quite amazing to suddenly see depth in what was previously a level plane of white.
For obvious reasons, this works best at sunset, when the fusion reactor that we orbit tends to pierce the clouds, shoving them out of the way so that we can see it best. Then you get to watch a gorgeous lightshow, a bonus thrown in for free.
That’s not to mention the interesting shapes that sometimes form. Even the most innocuous shape can be inspiration for artists, or even writers such as myself. For instance, the other day I saw a cloud that looked to me like the shape of a futuristic plane space shuttle that I’ve been trying to envision in my writings. Thanks to a random accumulation of water vapour in the atmosphere, I was given inspiration. Who would have thought?

On a related, and if anything more important, topic, the stars in the night sky are at least five times as beautiful. I implore you, if you have even the slightest opportunity, to visit an area with little or no light pollution, ie: away from large urban areas, ideally a rural area. Take a blanket, depending on the climate where you live. There are other factors, of course. It’s a strange coincidence that clouds are detrimental to star viewing. But they cannot hog the sky every night, and eventually there will be a cloudless night, hopefully with no moon. Perfect.
Find some flat terrain away from trees and power lines, lie on your back and stare up, and behold the Milky Way, our galaxy. It would be cliché to advise pondering the meaning of life at this time, and in fact I don’t recommend it at all. Our galaxy is far to beautiful not to give it our full attention. So take at least five minutes to relegate all thoughts to a lower priority. Concentrate on what you’re looking at. Roam between stars, and the occasional planet, letting your eyes adjust. Stay there for a while and you may even see one of our species’ four hundred active satellites zipping across the sky, or perhaps a shooting star. They’re not as rare as you might think. Tens of thousands of objects disintegrate as they enter our atmosphere every day, most of them too small to be seen from terra firma. None the less, if you look often enough, odds are you’ll see a streaking flash of white, lasting no more then a second. I myself have seen two in recent months, and in that time I spent less then half an hour looking at the night sky. It will happen eventually, keep looking.
I wouldn’t endorse trying to make out constellations and so on, though of course I won’t forbid it. Still, postpone your analytical, or your philosophical, side for at least a while, merely letting the multitude of lights entrance you.
I’ll share with you a little secret, thought I can’t call it so, since it’s merely a seldom thought about fact. All those lights that you see, every one of them, is not where those balls of flaming gases are currently positioned. Remember that while light moves at three times ten to the power of eight metres per second, most of these objects are light years away. If our sun, the one we orbit, were to be extinguished at this very second, it would take eight minutes for the last ray of light it emitted to reach Earth. It would take us eight minutes to realise anything was wrong.
Take this simple fact and apply it to the stars of our galaxy, and it paints a wondrous conclusion. We are staring into a deep time machine. The light that we are seeing from those stars was emitted around the time of the dinosaurs, sixty five million years ago, and it is only just reaching us. Anything could have happened to those stars hence. They could have been struck by asteroids, exploded into red giants, collapsed into white dwarfs, become black holes, become supernovas. The pulse of light and cosmic radiation from a new supernova, birthed from that star you were just looking at, could be hurtling towards us as we speak, and you and I wouldn’t know it for many millions of years. Every time you look at the sky, you’re seeing what our galaxy was like, tens of millions of years ago.
So please, take some time, and enjoy this spectacular sight. It might be the closest to time travel that any of us ever get.