Upsight

Upsight is used as a noun for a sudden insight—a moment when understanding clicks into place and reframes a situation.

First appearance and context

The term is first used during a quiet task in the kitchens, after a discussion about orbits and the limitations of working in raw coordinates versus more intuitive descriptions. In that moment, the speaker "has an upsight": a recognition that teaching younger students at the right time is his responsibility as much as a senior teacher's.

Important role in events

This upsight immediately prompts a change in approach. The speaker decides the student is ready to move beyond Saunt Lesper’s coordinate-based methods into more suitable abstractions used by practicing theorists—spaces defined by action principles and, in cosmography, descriptions built around orbital elements rather than component-wise positions and velocities.

Description and usage

From context, an upsight is an instantaneous flash of understanding, used to justify or explain a shift in perspective or plan. It is presented plainly, as an everyday word rather than a formal technical term.