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The holidays (all kinds of them) are upon us. Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, take a few moments to step outside and look up at the night sky. Orion should be prominent, and not far away, one horn of the Hyades (in Taurus) seem to point at the planet Mars. If you have binoculars or a small telescope, check out the Orion Nebula not far from the three stars that make up Orion's belt. And, don't forget to include the Pleiades in your stellar and planetary travels!
We celebrated my birthday on Friday by taking the day off and wandering up the coast of Maine. It's a pretty state and when the weather's nice but the tourists haven't arrived yet, it's sublime.
I noticed the skies were pretty dark there, even with the glow of a few distant city nebulae on the horizons.
As we were driving back home, we kept watching Venus off in the west. Even though I knew Venus was setting, the planet still looked a little different from what I'm used to. It seemed more "reddish," probably because we were looking at it through the lower part of Earth's atmosphere—the "muck" as we call it in stargazing circles. But it was shining like a bright beacon as it set.
Venus and the Pleiades, 2007 April 13 by Geoff Chester, and posted on the US Naval Observatoryweb page.
Venus is still bright in the western sky, and sets late in the evening for the next few weeks. It'll be the bright light in the western sky that isn't point-like, doesn't move like a plane, and isn't a flying saucer. Look for it if you're out wandering around enjoying the onset of northern hemisphere summer or early winter in the southern hemisphere.
We went out to dinner with friends tonight at a local eatery. A good time was had by all and dinner was good. When we left, we stepped out into the crisp 9°F evening and there was Orion shining above us in the southern half of the sky. If it hadn't been so cold out, we could have dallied a bit and looked at the nebula and traced out some of the other bright stars around the constellation. But, since we weren't dressed for observing, we admired the sight as we rushed to the cars and that was it.
Weather is often cited as a good reason for NOT stargazing. It's understandable. If it's cloudy or rainy or snowing, there's nothing to see. If it's cold, you can stand it for a few minutes before you want to head back inside to get warm. On hot summer nights you just want to get back into the air conditioning or away from the mosquitos. Again, completely understandable.
But, if you're heading back inside with a slight tinge of regret, or guilt, then I think you're a stargazer at heart. And, you'll find a way to get back out there to visit with the stars again.
They sell mighty fine mosquito repellant. Warm clothes can be had, or layered on. Or, you can do what I did one night during the Leonids: I sat on my car hood wrapped in a blanket, and propped up on the windshield facing Leo. It only occurred to me a few hours into the session that I COULD turn my car ON for a few minutes to warm the hood and then I would be warm, too. Wisdom in hindsight, that's sometimes what stargazing is about, too.
If it's cold or unpleasant where you are, here's a little something to tide you over until the next time you go out stargazing. It's the view of Orion from a spot in the Alborz Mountains in northern Iran, courtesy of Iranian journalist and amateur astronomer Babak Tafreshi and the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site.
The past couple of months, Mark and I have been working on a series of planetarium fulldome digital shows about stargazing. They're the "next generation" of what we in the planetarium profession like to call the "green arrow" show (so named because in the "olden days" the planetarium lecturer would use a green-arrow pointer to point things out in the sky).
The process of creating the shows got me to thinking about what jumble the stars must seem like for someone who has never gone out stagazing. I'm so used to stepping out and knowing what I'm looking at that I sometimes forget what it's like to NOT know the stars.
That cocky assurance was upended the first time I went to the Southern Hemisphere (back in 1986, for Halley's Comet) and I was confronted with a totally strange new sky. Oh, I recognized SOME patterns, and I had studied the star charts and used the planetarium to learn the skies, but the REALITY of those star-studded skies as seen from Peru was quite a shock.
Every so often, I think about the first stargazers—those humans who first looked up at the sky and tried to make sense of what they saw. It had to be a strange experience to watch the sky each night have NO idea of what those bright, shiny things were. Just out of sheer desperation, I imagine they turned to storytelling to get across the awe and wonder they felt. That's likely where we get the multiplicity of star tales streaming out by word of mouth through every culture. Not only did they help people remember the stars, but those star tales taught cultural values and told historical tales. You can go anywhere in the world and gain insight into a culture's values and history by listening to their ancient star tales.
My friend Ed Krupp, who is director of Griffith Observatory, told me that the stars had a certain utility for early cultures. In a previous blog entry I talked about the moon calendars and their likely link to female cycles. That's a practical use for sky knowledge. Here's another: charting the rise and set time of certain stars in certain seasons to commence agricultural activities. Or, how about this: using the locations of stars on certain dates to to explain a dead Pharoah's trip to the underworld? Or, using a public sundial to mark the passage of time in the marketplace?
We don't have to worry about stuff like that today. We have clocks and calendars and watches and computer programs to help us know the day and time and season. But, being able to do it with the stars sort of gives you a link to the cosmos you didn't know you could forge. Let's not forget how to do that!
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