In late winter / early spring evenings this ancient tapestry of light covers a wide swath of south western sky stretching as far as the eye can see from the horizon up to the zenith. The scene in this image here is captured from my front porch on March 20, the day of the Vernal Equinox.
The Winter Hexagon
Six brightest stars in this patch of the sky, form the giant asterism known as the Winter Hexagon. Each star is part of its own constellation. For five of them, their distances in light years from the earth mirror stages of human life from childhood to old age.
Sirius in Canis Major, the brightest star in the northern hemisphere is 8.6 light years away. A child who is 8 years old today sees its light that started out in the year they were born. The next three clockwise: Procyon in Canis Minor, Pollux in Gemini, and Capella in Auriga are ~12, 33 and 42 light years away.
The red giant Aldebaran, the ruddy eye of Taurus the bull, is the last one within present human lifespan at 66 light years. Light from Rigel, the right foot of Orion the hunter, is 864 years old.
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| Summer Triangle, March 19, 2023 |
The Summer Triangle
This photo of the Summer Triangle was shot from an east facing second floor window at about 6 a.m. Before modern navigation tools took their jobs, this asterism was used by the US Air Force navigators who called it the Navigator’s Triangle. In summer, the center of the triangle appears opposite the sun. At solar midnight, the time exactly opposite solar noon, the triangle would be directly overhead at a spot on the earth, when the Sun is at the nadir and the night is halfway between dusk and dawn.
Deneb, a blue-white supergiant, marks the tail of a Cygnus the swan. It stretches its giant wings and flies down the center of the Milky Way. Midway near its neck is Cygnus-X1, an X-Ray source powered by a black hole.
The bright star Altair is the tail of Aquila the eagle. In Greek-Roman mythology it carries the thunderbolt of Zeus. In Hinduism, Aquila is Garuda - the half human half eagle shape-shifting king of birds and the mount of Lord Vishnu. In Egypt, it is the falcon Horus.
The uppermost point of the triangle is Vega, a main sequence star in the tiny constellation of Lyra, the harp. In Greek myths it is a lyre. The Arabs saw in it a vulture frozen in deep dive.
In 13,000 BCE Vega used to be the pole star. It will be so again around 12,000 CE as the earth wobbles about its axis of spin completing a 25,000 year long cycle.
Ben Trovato
Woven with the constellations are stories. Commemorative tales that have been told by the Chinese, Indians, the Arab Bedouins, Sumerians. and handed down from the Greeks to the Romans. Signifying something that captivated the minds of originators, these stories have been retold by generations, crossed continents with travelers and endured the test of time up to modern day.
These stories that make an otherwise pointless sea of points of light come alive. Stories that have been playing out long before humans were here and will perhaps go on long after we are gone.
As they say in Italian:
se non è ve·ro, è ben tro·va·to.
Even if it’s not true, it’s a story well told.
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Photography:
Canon 70D (unmodified)
Winter Hexagon - 13s exposure, Tokina ultra wide lens at 11 mm, F2.8 ISO 800, Astronomic CLS light pollution filter. Post processed in Topaz DenoiseAI and GIMP
Summer Triangle - 10s exposure, Tokina ultra wide lens at 11 mm, F2.8 ISO 800, no filters
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