Plate XLIX — Country Girl (the Boot on Marble)

Observing note

She left the ranch for a single summer and this is the sky she took with her: a heel-shaped group of five stars that, in the city, never climbs clear of the glare. The plate sets it against a pale, polished band of unresolved stars that the astronomer-poet labelled, with some irritation, the Marble Floor. Everyone tells her it does not belong there; the chart begs to differ.