Tag: star gazing

Summertime Falls Down

Dear Friends,

Happy fall! Lately I’m being told I’ve gotten lazy with pagan holidays.  I’m focusing too much on the Celts and should expand my cultural reach.

I confess I do love the Celts. But of course the autumn equinox has associations with harvest time in many cultures in the northern hemisphere. In China the Moon Festival takes place on the full moon closest to the equinox. This year the full harvest moon was on September 20. I am visiting cousins in Gig Harbor, Washington and we celebrated by watching the glorious moon rise over Puget Sound just to the left of Mt. Rainier while on a zoom call with my brother Don. A thoroughly modern pagan celebration!I

was introduced to Chinese philosophy in a class about Chinese medicinal cooking led by West County neighbor Briahn. What an eye opener! A whole different way of looking at nature and the earth. Each of the five phases or seasons of ancient Chinese philosophy carries associations with specific things. Not only spring, summer, fall and winter, but also the cardinal directions, colors, sounds, organs in the body, fundamental elements such as wood, fire, earth, metal, and real or mythological beasts.

In Chinese tradition, the autumn season is associated with the color white, the emotions of both courage and sadness, the sound of weeping, the lung organ, the metal element, and a white tiger. Autumn is also connected in Chinese thought with the direction west, considered to be the direction of dreams and visions. To the Chinese, nature means more than just the cycling of the seasons. Nature is within and around us, in all things. 

This summer I’ve been communing with nature by watching the night sky on clear nights. At the Ides of August I missed the Perseid meteor shower because smoke from fires in the Sierra mixed with fog to obscure the sky in Santa Rosa. But the clear sky has returned periodically.

I developed a bit of an obsession with the night sky and when I told neighbor Pam, she lent me a book by her husband, Jerry Waxman, who before his death in 2009 had been an astronomy professor at Santa Rosa Jr. College. It’s called Astronomical Tidbits: A Layperson’s Guide to Astronomy and it’s a perfect book for me, a layperson if there ever was one. Astronomy is explained and stories told in short short chapters, just right for my short attention span.

Jerry was forced to retire from teaching in 2003 after being diagnosed with Multiple Systems Atrophy (MSA), a disease like Parkinson’s. He worked on the book the last two years of his life and Pam got it published. Pam told me Jerry’s doctor speculated that toxins in the environment caused the disease. He was a runner who daily ran through vineyards coated with pesticides. The doctor said farmers, too, have higher evidence of this disease than the general population.

Jerry’s death is a reminder that living in a semi-rural agricultural area does not save us from industrial pollution. I’ve wondered about the effects of pesticide exposure on my own health. I grew up in Yakima Washington in the middle of an apple orchard when DDT was sprayed liberally and crop dusters flew over with regularity. My mother had what would now be called environmental illness. She died at 70 after years of suffering from COPD.

I know that those crop duster pilots showed signs of memory loss in studies. Did exposure to pesticides affect my memory? I’ve suffered from memory problems all my adult life (although as a little kid I was a whiz). At some point I was helped by seeing this as a disability, although the cause remains a mystery. One way I have coped is to learn to let things go when I can’t remember. Another is to focus on just memorizing one thing at a time.

Stargazing this summer I have focused on the summer triangle because it contains three stars that are the first to come out after dark. The triangle is an asterism, made up of stars that are part of three different constellations. Vega, the brightest star in the northern hemisphere, is the very first star I see and by now in September it is high in mid-sky. Seeing Vega blink on is comforting in this age of turmoil. The earth is still turning, my star is still there. The other two stars are Deneb and Altair, though I keep forgetting Altair. Gotta let that go. Then I will memorize it again tomorrow.

Here is another cool thing I learned from this book while reading about meteor showers. The best time to look for meteors is between 3 and 6 a.m. because we are on the side of the earth that is rushing forward in space! It’s called the leading edge. Jerry writes, “Earlier, around 9 p.m., the observer finds him or herself on the trailing edge, the backside of the Earth. Just the way your front windshield has more dead bugs than the rear windshield, so the leading edge of the Earth gathers more meteors.”

Now on a clear night when I awake at 3 or 4 or 5 a.m., I go outside, sit in a zero gravity chair and look up. Even if I don’t see any falling stars, it’s exhilarating to think that I’m on the edge of the Earth that’s rushing into space! And it’s humbling to remember that I’m just a tiny speck on a little planet in a minor solar system.

Wishing you a fabulous autumnal equinox!

Love, Molly (and Holly)

Hot Tub Stargazing–My New Sport

Here’s one thing covid has not stolen from us—the night sky. Stars and planets, the moon in all its phases, meteor showers, constellations. 

In my last home in San Francisco we had a good view of the southern sky from the deck, high in the air from the fourth story, so we could see the moon and planets rise and set. But a view of the north sky was blocked by the building and Bernal Hill.

Now in Santa Rosa we have a better view of the north sky. In the summer we sat back in outdoor zero gravity chairs to star watch. I relearned the summer constellations—Ursa Major (the Big Dipper), the giant square of Pegasus, the cross of Cygnus. We keep close track of the moon’s progress. We do love moongazing but stargazing is best with a dark cloudless sky.

Waiting for the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn we watched nightly as they came closer and closer together. They converged into one giant star for the first time in 800 years, on the solstice, December 21. It was a great way to celebrate the winter solstice but clouds blocked our view on that night.

Photo by Darren Samuelson of the Perseid Meteor shower on August 12 taken from Hopland

This winter I’ve discovered a new pastime—hot tub stargazing. From the hot tub we get a window on the north sky. I find Polaris by fixing my gaze on the gas grill, then looking up. The North Star doesn’t change location (even though the gas grill might); all the other stars appear to rotate around it because right now it lies nearly in a direct line with the Earth’s rotational axis. But that will change in a cycle that takes 26,000 years! The Big Dipper and W-shaped Cassiopeia travel around the North Star taking up opposite positions in evening and morning. 

Winter mornings are a great time to star gaze. It doesn’t start to get light here till after 6:30 at solstice. The sun doesn’t rise till almost 7:30. Of course it’s colder than at night. Often it’s around freezing when I go out at 5:30 or 6 am, but the hot tub, set at 104 degrees, is a perfect antidote.

In the morning even with low clouds or some fog, two bright stars greet me. In the east is Vega. In the west is Capella with the north star, Polaris, in between. Capella, the third brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere after Arcturus and Vega, is part of the constellation Auriga, which I just learned about. Its name means little goat in Latin, depicting the goat Amalthea that suckled Zeus in classical mythology. Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. You have to look straight up in the summer, and then you can see Vega is one of the stars of the Summer Triangle along with Altair and Deneb. But in winter it twinkles near the northeastern horizon.

There are some impediments to hot tub stargazing: our private moon—the street light just above the roof; glasses that fog up in the tub; city lights, or any lights. I had to turn off our Solstice tree lights before going out to the tub.

Of course you don’t need a hot tub to stargaze. In San Francisco to watch a winter meteor shower we would dress warmly and lie on a camp mattress on the deck. Maybe not so much fun in a colder winter climate. But you can watch from indoors too.

From the hot tub I watched the Geminid meteor shower at its height in mid-December. Then in the morning back in the house with coffee in hand I set up a stargazing station in the living room looking south through the picture window. One bright star greeted me—Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo. I saw a shooting star at 6:30 am just as the sky started to lighten.

Watching for shooting stars is not always calming.  During the meteor shower I discovered stargazing anxiety. If you close your eyes for a moment you might miss a shooting star. They are quick and unpredictable! I got a case of FOMO. How many meteors did I miss? Since then I’ve made an effort to more calmly appreciate the capriciousness of the universe.

You can’t look at your phone and stargaze at the same time, though I do use the phone to identify heavenly bodies. A decade ago on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Holly and I made good use of a phone app we’d just discovered called Star Walk. You point your phone in the direction of the star or planet or satellite you want to ID and as you move the phone it shows the whole night sky with the planets’ orbits and all the constellations.

In old age my sleep habits vary. I often wake up wide awake in the middle of the night. One night at 1:30 I could see, even without glasses, one bright star outside my window. So of course I used the Star Walk app and learned it is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.

I know we are all happy that the light is returning now since the winter solstice. But I’m just a little sad that there will be less dark sky. I still hope to catch a falling star.