Learning about and observing the night sky has a major advantage
over other natural science interests. Wildflowers are a spring-only
attraction around here.
Learning about and observing the night sky has a major advantage over other natural science interests. Wildflowers are a spring-only attraction around here.
To see a Giant Sequoia or a Bristlecone Pine means long hours in the car. Mountain Lions are reclusive, wary and often most active at night. But if you can walk to the backyard and look up, you can get to know the stars. There they are, night after night, just sitting there. Slam the back door. Raise your voice. The stars won’t dash over the horizon and out of sight.
Unleash your imagination and these specks of light will truly astound you. One light year (5,865,696,000,000 miles) doesn’t amount to a crack in the sidewalk up there. Andromeda, the nearest galaxy to ours is 2,300,000 light years away. The Hubble Telescope is photographing galaxies 10 billion light years away. Numbers like this will make your brain hurt, but they also tickle that part of you that can only be touched when you realize that something so incomprehensible is very real. And all of it is just over your head.
More bright stars shine in winter than in any other season. Winter stargazing is also aided by the dominating presence of one of the sky’s most easily recognized constellations, Orion the Hunter. Before you retire to bed, step outside and look to the south for the brightest constellation. You will recognize Orion’ s distinctive three-star belt that is surrounded by four stars that define his shoulders and legs.
The lower right of those four stars is Rigel, the brightest star in Orion and the seventh brightest in the heavens. 50,000 times brighter than the sun, the white light of Rigel that you see left the star 800 years ago during the Middle Ages. Betelgeuse (namesake of the movie Beetlejuice) is the upper left of Orion’s outlining stars and is one of the largest stars known to astronomers. It is red-tinged because it is a red supergiant, an old and obese star that would swallow the Earth and Mars if it replaced the Sun at the center of our solar system.
If you have a pair of binoculars, look a short distance below Orion’s belt (give your eyes some time to adjust to the darkness). That smudge of light is a patch of cosmic gas called Orion’s Nebula and can be seen on a clear night with the naked eye.
Orion’s stars are also convenient pointers to other nearby stars of interest. Follow Orion’s belt down to the left 20 degrees (the width of two fists held at arms length) to Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Sirius is called the Dog Star because it is part of the constellation Canis Major (the Greater Dog).
Since this star rises with the sun in July and August, we have come to refer to these as the dog days of summer.
Follow Orion’s Belt the same distance in the other direction, up to the right, and you will bump into Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus the Bull which is the object of Orion’s hunting efforts. Keep going past Aldebaran a little further to a bright and beautiful cluster of stars called the Pleiades.
From Orion you can locate many other winter stars and constellations. A simple star guide can direct you. It is easy and enjoyable to learn and recognize the most common stars and constellations in the night sky, but don’t let the labeling process diminish your fascination with these incredible distances and the massive sizes. When I trap the Andromeda Galaxy in my binoculars, the light striking my retina left Andromeda 2,300,000 years ago. 186,000 miles per second for 2,300,000 million years. Yikes!
Vincent Van Gogh looked at them. Jesus looked at them. The first primitive man looked at them. No matter when they lived or where they lived, every person has shared the very same view of the very same stars.
Trying to comprehend the incomprehensible knocks us out of our cocky posture. It allows us the opportunity to consider the idea that maybe we aren’t in charge. Good medicine for a group that thinks they are pretty clever.
