In my companion article to this piece, I wrote that one of the top reasons that stargazing is the ultimate outdoor pursuit is because of the real world drama played out in the nightly motions of the stars and other celestial objects. A recent night of stargazing which I recently enjoyed in the remote and therefore star-happy location of Big Bend National Park serves as an illustrative example.
I reserved a backcountry campsite sight unseen; as I set up my tent and went out for a day hike, I didn’t think much about the mountainous ridge to the east, especially not as a backdrop for my evening entertainment of stargazing. Indeed, as I made my post-hike dinner, I was preoccupied with the action in the west and the (apparent) motion of only one star — the long and thrilling opening act represented by the sunset.
The World’s Best Opening Act
A description of the subtle but inexorable changes in the sky along with the appearance of the most vivid colors on the earthbound objects of the desert landscape during the progression of the sunset merit their own article, but it’s not my intention for this to be another ode to the majestic sunset.
From the perspective of the stargazer, the hour and a half or so between the final disappearance of the sun and the onset of full darkness is maddeningly slow. It’s easy to get impatient as seems like it will never get fully dark.
But patience is rewarded as the evening’s first stars (and planets) appear. If we can think of the evening’s celestial events as a stage drama, the transition from twilight to night is like the slowest imaginable raising of a curtain. But instead of taking the stage from the wings with dramatic entrances, the players participating in the first act are already there, slowly coming into view one by one as the stage lights brighten just enough to reveal their silhouettes, until they finally appear in full view and the proper action can begin.
Act I – Setting the Stage
As I geared up for the evening and turned my gaze upward, I felt a brief twinge of regret at having left my planisphere at home, forcing myself to rely on my somewhat rusty knowledge of the stars’ positions. But in a way, this made it more fun. Eventually I’d be able to identify the major constellations, but I wouldn’t quite know what they were until most of their stars were in sight.
As the constellations began to take shape, Perseus and the Pleiades were prominently showing several degrees above the ridge line, and the wedge of Taurus with its brightest red star Aldebaran was distinctly visible along with its neighboring constellation Auriga, its main star Capella shining brightly as well.
It was clear that this was destined to be a winter star extravaganza. Looking to the west trailing the setting sun, the three stars of the summer triangle were visible although it was clear that Altair would soon disappear below the horizon while Deneb, the smear of the Milky Way running through it, and the rest of the constellation Cygnus would be sticking around for a little longer.
A different polygon, the Winter Hexagon would be my focus tonight; it’s shear massiveness makes it an easy viewing target. Imposing in its bulk, it takes up one third of the sky when fully visible. With two of its six stars already on the stage, the Hexagon was well on its way reaching this stage of completion although it would take a few hours for the other four corners to show themselves.
Luckily, time was something I had plenty of; after a long day of backpacking and hiking including an ascent of the park’s highest peak, I was more than happy to lie supine in my sleeping bag and remain mostly motionless while the counterclockwise pinwheel rotation of everything around the North Star played out above me.
When a Ridge is a Stage
Several features of the ridge turned out to play critical roles in shaping the evening’s drama, none more than a deeply vertical V-shaped notch. At evening’s beginning, a bright star occupied the space within the notch, but as an isolated star, I didn’t think much of it. It was only after several minutes when another bright star rose closely behind it through the middle of the V that I realized that what I was seeing was Orion’s belt, oriented perpendicular to the ridge. Soon, Betelgeuse and Rigel came into sight, flanking the belt with perfect symmetry like the tips of a gyroscope’s central axis. With Rigel’s appearance, half of the Hexagon was in sight.
Next to make its way through the notch was the prominent star cluster I’ve always thought of as the hilt of Orion’s belt, but which is more commonly known as Orion’s sword. Along with the Collinder 69 cluster (Orion’s head) and the Pleiades, it was one of three prominent star clusters easily visible in a small patch of sky, a nice treat because if stars are great, having a whole cluster of them is even greater.
Finally, the third star of the belt made its way up through the notch, and I watched intently from its first appearance until it completely cleared the ridge, amazed as always by the speed at which celestial objects appear to move past a fixed reference point on the horizon.
Familiar Friends
A few stars were visible to the left of the hunter, but lacking my handy reference, I couldn’t place what they were. With the main stars of Orion in sight, I turned my attention to other features. Normally, Taurus’s neighbor in the zodiac, Aries, doesn’t offer much of interest with its slant of three stars appearing more or less like a celestial hockey stick; but tonight Jupiter was shining brightly beside it, making me regret I’d left my binoculars behind. Undoubtedly at least two of Jupiter’s brightest moons, among my favorite objects in the night sky, would have been visible with just eight times magnification.
But no binoculars were needed to see my favorite object of all, our nearest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda. Arching my gaze over from the ridge, I went through the familiar progression of locating the Great Square of Pegasus (easy enough), finding the triangle which represents the horse’s front legs, moving one corner over to the horse’s tail and finally out along it away from the body. With a bit of magnification, the galaxy appears like the tip of a cotton swab slightly stretched out, somewhat more solid in the middle and more diffuse around the edges and with the naked eye it’s no more than a faint smear.
It’s by no means the most exciting or eye-catching object in the sky, but something about it makes it different, and I’ve always been powerfully impacted by the idea of being able to see another galaxy. It will certainly be beyond our lifetimes when we’re able to cover the 2.5 million light years separating us from it, but for now it makes for a worthy target of our imagination. Beyond that, the Andromeda galaxy is one of those features that when I’m able to see it with the naked eye, makes me grateful that I’ve made it to a truly prime stargazing destination.
I feel the same way about other constellations like Pisces, Cancer, Camelopardalis or even the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor). While Andromeda is easy enough to locate with binoculars, some of the dimmer constellations are harder to find that way, and being able to see them is like being reunited with old friends not seen in a long time. I feel the same way about any of the constellations, but the longer I go without seeing them, the more exciting it is to locate them once again.
Five Out of Six Ain’t Bad
After a brief glance at the northernmost sky, I returned my attention to the emerging Winter Hexagon, amazed by how much movement can take place in fifteen minutes. It’s part of the game – how long can you wait without looking away? What will sneak over the horizon if you do?
In this case, I looked back just in time to see the fourth corner of the Hexagon about to clear the ridge. It was Castor, one of the twin stars of Gemini which meant I had to wait only a little longer for Pollux to appear behind it. Now, I was able to figure out the identities of the mystery stars I’d noticed earlier in the middle of the Hexagon– they were Castor and Pollux’s lower bodies, and in these near ideal conditions, I was able to observe the truly twin-like nature of the constellation in a clearer way than I remembered.
With two-thirds of the Hexagon in place, it was just a matter of waiting for the remaining two corners to appear. It sounds simple, but there was still a lot of time left until that would happen.
In the meantime, the topography of the ridge created a backdrop for an engaging phenomenon I couldn’t have seen if my random selection process had landed me at a different campsite. The ridge rose diagonally to the right of the notch through which the stars of Orion’s belt appeared; it was angled in such a way that Rigel rose right along its face, like a glowing ball defying gravity and rolling up a ramp with no visible hand to propel it upwards. It even disappeared for a brief moment before re-emerging for the remainder of its upward slide.
While my gaze was directed towards this unexpected action, a new star had snuck above the ridge below and to the right of Gemini. It required only a minor deduction to conclude that this was the dimmer member of another set of twin stars, the constellation Canis Minor. It was therefore only a matter of time before its brighter neighbor Procyon, the fifth member of the Hexagon, would be in sight.
And the Dog Makes Six
At this point, I knew only the final (but most dramatic) act of the show remained before reaching its conclusion when the imposing asterism of the Winter Hexagon could be seen reaching in a wide arc extending up from the ridgeline. Now at this point you might ask, “what’s the point of waiting around to watch the ending to a story you already know is going to happen? Where is the suspense in that?”
Knowing the end of a story doesn’t mean there’s no value in reading or watching until the end. If you’re like me, you know several people who have read or watched the Harry Potter series all the way through multiple times. Can you say you’ve never felt suspense watching a movie you’ve seen before? Do you get something new out of a movie watching it at a different point in your life? On a different screen? With headphones?
Like a book or a movie whose effect can change based on your perspective, the unfolding of the stars over the course of the evening changes depending on your viewpoint or the position of the planets and the moon. Once Orion had risen a little more, I knew the ending of this particular telling of the story would be something truly novel for me.
It’s fortunate for stargazers that certain stars can be easily found by following a line which connects several others. Perhaps the most popular example is finding the North Star by following the line formed by the two outer bowl stars of the Big Dipper. Similarly, the line connecting the three stars of Orion’s belt points directly to a star that’s impossible not to notice, mostly because it’s the brightest star in the sky, Sirius (The Dog Star). Unmistakable with its colorful twinkling, it takes on the appearance of a strobe light for a dance party taking place in a distant region of the galaxy. In this case, following the stars of Orion’s belt drew my gaze to the center of the notch in the ridge; I knew what would happen next.
The Final Act
The December night was cold and I was tired after a long day of hiking and backpacking and several hours of stargazing, but I was committed to seeing it through to the end. I had looked around at other regions of the sky throughout the evening. I’d glanced at the constellations clustered around the North Star, checked in on Andromeda a few times, and appreciated the fact that being a few hundred miles south of my home gave me a better look at more southern reaches of the sky.
But from here on out, my gaze was fixed directly on the notch; I wasn’t going to miss the emergence of the brightest star in the sky through a tunnel which seemed designed just for it, like a football player taking the field in its special role of completing the Winter Hexagon.
I couldn’t tell if actually took longer for Sirius to emerge compared to the other corners of the Hexagon I’d seen rising over the ridge or if it was just my being tired and cold, but in either case, my patience was rewarded and it felt like a significant moment when Sirius’s first tendrils of light crept over the low point in the notch. Although I’d done nothing but lie in my sleeping bag for several hours, it felt like I’d accomplished something worthwhile as the rest of the colorful point of light quickly ascended to fully reveal itself. The action wasn’t over yet.
Sirius’s climb through the notch seemed like an emergence from some kind of rocky cocoon, as if it were breaking free from terrestrial confines and leaving the land behind to finally assume its proper place in the sky. As I lingered to watch its continued rise, it seemed like a fledgling bird taking flight for the first time, with all sense of closeness with Earthly observers left behind as it rose with its companions further and further overhead through the dome of the night sky.
With the six stars of the Hexagon fully visible, it was easy to draw the lines between them to form the imaginary but unmistakable shape that dominates the winter sky after nightfall. Perhaps if I’d taken a nap I could have watched the drama unfold a bit further. Ursa Major’s front feet were peeking over the horizon, meaning a dramatic rise and rotation of the Big Dipper was soon to follow, and with Gemini gaining greater distance from the horizon, I could have stayed to enjoy a rare opportunity to view the dim constellation of Cancer, or after a bit longer, to see the great celestial question mark formed by Leo, with its brightest star Regulus acting as that punctuation mark’s point.
Reflections on the Show
Speaking of question marks, perhaps no symbol is more appropriate when it comes to contemplating the night sky (sorry infinity sign). So many mysteries of the cosmos remain hidden from us, with our ability to make and relay observations from beyond our Solar system so limited, not by our imagination and ingenuity, but by the state of technology and the infancy of our age of celestial exploration. But as I struggled to keep my eyes open, I would have to leave the questions suggested by Leo’s curve of bright stars for another time.
I had a long hike planned for the next day, one which was surely to be followed by a repeat performance in the evening sky but which I nonetheless eagerly awaited despite full knowledge of the show’s ending. It was my last night in the backcountry which would be followed by my return to one of the largest cities in the United States. I didn’t look forward to leaving the night sky behind; I knew I’d savor my last chance to reacquaint myself with the winter night sky and to see the drama of the stars which populate it play out one final time.
But I also took comfort in knowing that whenever I managed to return to a location affording world class views of the night sky, those same inhabitants would be just where I left them and that the joy of discovering them again would be available whenever I treated myself to the opportunity to experience it.