Kathryn Schulz sees the beauty in staying up all night:
Of the many radical rearrangements of knowledge brought about by the Copernican revolution, my favorite is one that most people today take for granted but that, back then, blew everybody’s minds. It is this: The universe is dark. Before Copernicus, the cosmos was presumed to be awash in infinite, celestial light. Look at the brilliant blues on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Renaissance painting lagged behind Renaissance astronomy), or read Dante, who declared that beyond the spheres of the planets lay the "Luminous Heaven." With the shattering of geocentrism came the realization that we do not look through night’s darkness into infinite day, but through daylight into infinite darkness.
(Painting by João Figueiredo via But Does It Float)
The Dish 