I am so lucky to live here, especially in winter when the air feels filtered. I’m here where city lights carry only so far. Truth be told, it isn’t luck. I want to be here. Every night the sky calls me to look up and become awestruck. Sometimes it’s only for a moment. But it’s always wondrous. If awe can be defined as where imagination becomes reality, there is no place better to seek it than the night sky.
February, shortened though it is, has awe written all over it. As great a sight as Orion may be, the spectacular nebula in his sword is, perhaps, the signature sight throughout winter. High in the southern sky this month, Orion is one of those constellations that actually looks like what the ancients named it. With a nearly horizontal belt of three bright stars and the faint outline of a sword dangling from it, Orion looks every bit ‘The Hunter’. The right shoulder is marked by the big, reddish star Betelgeuse, the left foot by the even brighter Rigel. But it’s the sword that on a very dark night or with the help of binoculars, reveals the real magic. The great Orion Nebula is one big star factory. Bright, young, immensely hot stars are forming within clouds of hydrogen gas. Through a telescope it is truly stunning. I stare at it and think: illumination.
But it gets better. In Greek Mythology, Zeus feared that Orion showed far too much interest in the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. To protect them, he turned them into stars and placed them in the sky – where they’d be safe – to the west of Orion, past Taurus the Bull. The sisters are now called the Pleiades, an open star cluster. To the naked eye, they appear as a small question mark or a tiny Big Dipper. With binoculars their beauty explodes as individuals and as a group.
A little further out is the Andromeda Galaxy. It will take considerable concentration and darkness to see it without magnification, but it’s worth the effort. Find it with the help of a star chart or mobile app. It appears as little more than a cotton ball-like smudge. But the light coming from that smudge has traveled 2.5 million light years to reach our eyes. The math staggers me. Light moves at 186,000 miles per second, 6 trillion miles in a single year. That’s where the wonder comes from. I’m a part of something so immense it’s nearly beyond comprehension. But it’s in the tiny bit I do comprehend that I experience the awe.
In too many places there’s no such thing as a dark sky. Light pollution dims all but the very brightest objects. But here, it’s right outside the front door. Step out.
Editor’s note. This is the first in a new series of columns focusing on astronomy. Harold Meckler moved to the Patagonia area five years ago after a career as a social worker. He has had an article published in “Sky and Telescope” and is the author of “Monsoon,” a novel about self-discovery. Meckler is offering an elective at PUHS in astronomy. “I’ve always loved to look at the night sky,” he said.