Sometime in 2014, for the first time in human history, more of us lived in cities than in the country. Along with the growth of these metropolises comes the baleful yellow of sodium-vapor lamps. The lamps blot out the darkness and calm that instinctually human fear of the night. Modern society tempts us with distractions and entertainment wherever we look. Failing that, it threatens us with jobs that need doing or else bad things (imagined or otherwise) will befall us. Who has the time or patience to freeze or swelter to look at the stars? There are Netflix shows to watch and video games to play, after all.
Light Pollution in the United States. Image Courtesy: NASA Earth Observatory
The night sky is part of humanity’s shared heritage, and because of this, we remain enthralled with the night sky. The Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, Messier 45, has been known to cultures throughout history. The Japanese call it Subaru, the Navajo know it as Dilyéhé, the Arabs mention al-Thurayya in the Quran. Before calendars, the stars were our guide to religious festivals and a sign that we could plant or harvest our crops. Before GPS and accurate maps, the stars gave us the means to navigate a vast, sometimes hostile world.
Even in our more secular age, we still think about the night sky. The heyday of amateur astronomy peaked with the race to the moon back in the 60’s. But shows like Cosmos, movies like Interstellar, and images from the Hubble Space Telescope conspire to keep space in our collective consciousness. More recently the escapades of Space X may mean that an era of cheaper space exploration is coming. Astronomy remains one of the few scientific fields where amateurs can contribute useful data and make meaningful discoveries. Astrology remains popular, much to my chagrin. There is no need to consume all this information second-hand though. Using nothing but your naked eye, even from the brightest locations on the planet, you can catch glimpses of the night’s splendor.
Starting in stargazing does not require much. You can easily find a planetarium app like SkySafari for IOS and Android, or Stellarium for the PC. If you prefer a physical version, Starmaps provides a monthly star chart completely free. Pop out on a clear night and use your star map to identify the brightest objects. Besides the moon, the planets, and some bright stars like Sirius or Vega, see if you can pick out notable constellations like the Big Dipper.
When you are starting out, don’t worry about picking out everything in the night sky. As strange as it sounds, you need to learn how to look at both your star map and the night sky. You will determine what is visible from your location and conditions, and you will learn how to hop from star to star to get to your destination. Each day, the stars will rise 4 minutes earlier. With a little time and patience, you will be able to track the course of the seasons by the rising and setting of the constellations, much as your forebears did.
At the time of writing of this blog, we are approaching spring. Our night sky pivots away from the galactic core to peer into deep space - spring is the season of galaxies. Peering in the direction of the constellation Virgo puts you in the general area a thousand galaxies, all part of the Virgo Supercluster. Hopping around with your star map, you might be able to find Ursa Major, more commonly known as The Big Dipper. In that constellation lies galaxies with evocative names like the Pinwheel Galaxy and the Whirlpool Galaxy. In the city, do not expect Hubble quality images. Even in the darkest sites, most galaxies, though theoretically bright, are far too distant for our eyes to pick them out. With a small to medium telescope in many cities, most galaxies will appear as a faint gray smudge. A far cry from the glorious curving spiral arms and glowing cores with which the Hubble spoils us. But it should fill you with awe that using a small piece of glass and your eye, you can see a galaxy far, far away a long time ago.
The notion of galaxies is recent. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a lively debate over whether those nebulous objects were separate galaxies or faint star clusters in our own Milky Way. Then in the 1920’s Edwin Hubble’s showed conclusively that those faint fuzzies were too distant to be part of our Milky Way. The universe is an astonishingly large place. A light year, the measure of the distance which light can travel in a year is about 6 trillion miles or 9.5 trillion kilometers. Our humble Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across. The Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) is the largest galaxy in our local group. It is also one of the furthest objects you can see with your naked eye (albeit usually from sites darker than your typical city), at 2.5 million light-years away.
That we can see at all is an overlooked blessing. Our solar system is located far from the much dustier galactic core, allowing us to peer upwards and outwards. Our pale blue dot has a transparent atmosphere, and we are visual creatures. Imagine if intelligent life arose in the oceans of the moon Europa. There would be no light, for not only is the sun far away, but miles of solid ice separate the water from its warming rays. Would intelligent life there think of distant stars and planets, and dream of one day seeing and visiting them?
With the internet, you can easily see the beautiful images that amateurs and professionals produce. The pictures will have detail and color the human eye cannot match. But there is something qualitatively different and beautiful about seeing these objects in person. The images that you see on your monitor are snapshots, singular objects. With repeated observations, you will begin to see things change over time – you will develop a feel for the rhythm of the cosmos.
It is true that a human lifespan, indeed the history of humanity overall, is not even a blip on the cosmic scale. We find ourselves at the center of a series of fortunate events. When we look at the stars, we gaze into the past in more than one way. As we look at the Pleiades, we do not see them as they are, but as they were 400 to 500 years ago. It is the same celestial object that our ancestors used to measure their seasons by and tell stories to their families. Not only can we look to the stars, but we can also understand them in a way no other animal on Earth can. It takes just a moment of time, and it would be a shame to squander such a boon.
A wonderful film from Sriram Murali's Vimeo page. You can find his website here, and his channel here.
Addendum:
If you prefer a more guided approach, almost every city will have an amateur astronomy club. They usually have outreach sessions where you can talk to folks about their equipment and learn more about the night sky. Amateur astronomers are an obsessive but friendly bunch. I will also add a link to two different books. Turn Left at Orion, is a fantastic start for anyone looking to get a little deeper into the hobby. The Urban Astronomer’s Guide is a more focused book with a myriad of tips and tricks for city-slickers with telescopes.
Resources:
Sriram Murali & Saving the Dark:
http://savingthedark.com/
Amateur Astronomy Club Database:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-clubs-organizations/
The Urban Astronomer’s Guide
Kindle Version: http://amzn.to/2Hz5g7W
Dead Tree Version: http://amzn.to/2GuAfCP
Turn Left at Orion:
Kindle Version: http://amzn.to/2FJKyBE
Dead Tree Version: http://amzn.to/2tOckM3
Skymaps:
http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html
Stellarium:
http://stellarium.org/
SkySafari:
https://skysafariastronomy.com/