THE SOLSTICE — Summer 2025
“On the Summer Solstice… Whatever is dreamed on this night will come to pass.” - William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Today, on the longest day of the year, we invite you to join us in an ancient ritual. Pause, look up and dream. Dream with us … Tomorrow, when the sun rises again, those dreams crystalize.
Image Collage: Hawley Side Table with James Webb Space Telescope Mirrors and Image of Solar Sphere
A letter from co-founder Crystal Ellis:
My grandfather, Thomas Harvey, was an engineer who worked in aeronautics. During the Summer breaks of my youth, my family would visit my grandfather at his home in Northern California. Even in his old age he was sharp and curious. I remember him in many ways — doing the crossword puzzle at breakfast, playing the piano in the midday, or watching baseball before falling asleep in his brown leather chair.
But, I remember him most when I look at the stars…
He had a framed photograph of the Hubble Telescope near his favorite leather chair. When we would sit down together, he would often end up telling me stories about his career. I loved these stories. Now, so many years later, they are hard to recount with any specificity. But what I can recall perfectly is how they transported me…
Detail: Fortune Tables
He would recall the challenge of trying to figure out (without modern computing) how a fluid would move inside of a rocket as it spun in orbit — drawing out a tidy diagram for me to see as he explained. Or he would tell me in depth about how the first mirror in the Hubble Telescope was optically flawed because of the tiniest error in its shape. Often I understood only a small portion of what he was sharing, but he had a nack for story telling, so that small portion was enough.
During one Summer visit, my Grandfather pulled me aside and said, “Crystal, I have something I want to show you” . It was a grainy photo (below) of a dark sky chock full of stars and galaxies.
I remember thinking it looked like confetti. It was beautiful — yet also commonplace to the modern eye. I didn’t understand its significance until he told me what I was looking at…
Hubble Deep Field Image Unveils Myriad Galaxies Back to the Beginning of Time
