I live in the city, where the stars that are visible in the night sky are often few and far between. The city’s lights and sky conditions many times conspire to make even the most obvious constellations difficult to recognize.
Last year, when I attempted to reconnect with the stars for the first time in many years, after learning the winter constellations around Orion, the spring rainy season’s clouds doused my plans to continue learning the annual terrain of the skies.
This year the weather seems to have brought more challenging conditions to see much beyond the planets of our solar system, but with persistence I have found that there is still a lot to be seen.
In the early hours of the morning there are sometimes only three bright stars to be seen overhead. These are three first magnitude stars that can be seen, when the clouds allow, even when it is difficult or impossible to see the Big Dipper or the North Star (Polaris) without binoculars.
These stars, known as the Summer Triangle, rise in the East earlier and earlier as the year progresses.
By late summer they will be high in the sky in the early evenings. The brightest is Vega, in the constellation Lyrae. The Southermost, in the constellation Aquila, is Altair. The dimmest one is Deneb, marking the tail of Cygnus the Swan, and also the top of what is known as the Northern Cross.
With binoculars I can see a lot of stars in this area. At five am lately, I have seen this triangle for the last month.
There is a delightful book, Robert Burnham Jr’s Celestial Handbook, from the 1970s, that not only has astronomical and physical information about the stars and constellations and deep sky objects of interest, but also, of great value, has wonderful legends, myths, and stories, both recent and ancient, from various cultures, nationalities, and traditions all over the world.
For instance, from China, a classic tale enjoyed by Confucious in his time, of the love between a Weaving Girl (Vega), and a Herd Boy, (Altair), who were kept apart by a river (The Milky Way). They could only meet every seven years, by crossing a bridge made of birds.
Wow! What a story!
I sometimes think about how the cultural heritage of our world’s various stories might transcend all our differences and perhaps bring us all together.
Perhaps this might help us to see each other’s common humanity, and enable us to work together to create solutions to the cancers that divide us.
Like T’ai Chi, this might help us all, as parts of one greater whole, to work together toward a less polarized world.
Very Best Wishes to All,
Daniel
