Harbinger

By Michael on October 2, 2006 at 12:37 pm | In Blog Posts | No Comments

I was at my modest observatory on Saturday night. Beautiful, cool and clear night. While my telescope clicks away, taking image after image of my current target (which right now is GSC 3196-641) I get to stand outside and look at the night sky with the most ancient detector of all — my eyes!

I enjoy watching the seasons change. In the spring I anxiously look for the rise of Scorpius and Sagittarius. In the autumn I dread the rise of the Pleiades, Taurus and, the ultimate harbinger of winter, Orion.

They say Orion is the most recognizable asterism. An asterism is a recognizable group of stars, like the Big Dipper. We are used to saying “constellation” but technically that means ALL the stars in the constellation. The Big Dipper is a subset of stars from Ursa Major just like most of what we recognize as Orion is a subset of all the stars in Orion.

Anyway, if you stay up until midnight or so, you can see Orion rising. It’s always a beautiful sight, even though, for us in the Northern Hemisphere, it means the inevitable start of winter.