It really is a terrifically lovely word for a terrifically lovely mathematical creation! I would love to set one up in my bedroom, if I could find one for under 400 dollars, that was pretty accurate even if accurate only up through Jupiter...

One of the best things that has happened over Christmas break has been seeing Orion, whom I take for granted, up over to the left of the house--Orion's making a huge claim to a wide expanse of sky in which the farmhouse and grove seem very, very small by comparison. Oh, dark skies! With wide expanse of lights! Tremendously over us! It is a glorious thing to perceive one's minuteness! And I have no eartly idea why this should be so. You'd think it would strike a being as something quite the opposite.