I first heard about this wondrous little machine at a conference. A Finnish astronomer pulled me aside, eyes bright with a level of emotion rarely displayed north of the Baltic. She waxed lyrical about the Tapo’s night-sky potential. When a Finn enthuses, you listen — these are people for whom unbridled excitement usually means raising an eyebrow.
Naturally, I rushed home and purchased one for my Middlemarch paddock. During the day, the camera offers a live feed of rural antics — an unexpectedly compelling genre of entertainment — but, when the stars come out, the real action begins.
The real magic, though, lies in the software that automatically compiles nightly highlights. Each morning, I can sit down and watch a condensed reel of the night’s best celestial moments. It’s like Sky Sport for stargazers, only without the pundits shouting opinions you didn’t ask for.
The highlights can be spectacular. Last Saturday, at precisely 3:21am, the system captured an astonishing meteor — a streak of brilliance I would have missed entirely had I been asleep, or even outside with my camera pointed in the wrong direction (a not-uncommon occurrence).
As I edge toward my 60th birthday in January, I occasionally wonder whether age is gently dulling my urge to dash out into the cold every time the universe does something interesting. Perhaps. However, sitting in Portobello watching auroras and meteors do their thing above Middlemarch feels less like giving up the chase and more like embracing a new way of being present. Technology, at its best, extends our senses — letting us be in two places at once, without boots, thermals or a long drive home in the dark.
