What’s in the Skies is Often in the Eye of the Beholder
By Scott Levine
The other night I was looking up and thinking about the star patterns we see. One of the most interesting things to me is not just the stars, though they’re certainly fascinating, but the asterisms they’re in.
“That’s a dragon. That’s a telescope. That’s half a bull.” But that’s not what I mean.
We, people, are incredibly good at finding patterns where none exist. How many times have you seen guests on the “Today” show (I prefer “Live with Kelly and Ryan”) with a bunch of potato chips that look like former presidents or The Beatles? There’s even a word for seeing patterns where none exist: pareidolia.
So, when we look up, we see stars and decide they’re a group, even though it’s all just an optical illusion, a trick of perspective. Most of the time, they’re unrelated and are just in the same general direction as we see them from here.
If we were in some other neighborhood of the galaxy, the stars of the Orion or Boötes would be arranged completely differently – if we could see them at all. What patterns does someone living in those other, far-away places see? Is the sun – are you and I – in any of their asterisms?
Just as we ring in the new year, the enormous ring of very bright stars called Winter Hexagon, with Orion in the middle, takes over the southern skies. It’s a great example of this illusion. Nearly all these stars are close by as these things go, and we can use them to mark moments in a person’s life.
Look south, find Orion, and then draw a line through his famous belt, down toward the horizon. There’s Sirius, the brightest star in the entire night sky. It’s about eight light years away, so distant that its light has been traveling to your eye for about the lifetime of a third-grader. Bright yellow Capella’s light has been traveling for about 45 years, the length of my lifetime. Aldebaran, a retiree’s life.
Now, Orion’s brighter foot, the icy blue-white Rigel is very far away, around 700 light years, a Yoda life. In fact, and this is the part that always gets me, all of Orion’s bright stars are much farther than the Winter Hexagon’s even though they all appear close together to us. The whole of Orion is behind the Winter Hexagon! It’s like looking at a far-off clutch of trees through a window. Alnilam, the middle star in Orion’s belt, is among the farthest stars we can see with the naked eye, about 2,000 light years.
Here we are at the intersection of science, which doesn’t care what we see, and humanity, which does. Some far, some near, some big, some small. Yet, to us, they’re all a group – connected, together. That helps me feel connected to them, to other people and even to the people who spent their nights looking at these patterns and passing them along for thousands of years.
That night I stared at Capella again and again, bright, yellow and welcoming. I wondered what was going on there. Maybe someone there is seeing our sun from so far away and wondering. If you can tonight, maybe have a look, too. Who knows what you’ll see?
Happy New Year, everyone.
Scott Levine (astroscott@yahoo.com) is an astronomy writer and speaker from Croton-on-Hudson. He is also a member of the Westchester Amateur Astronomers, who are dedicated to astronomy outreach in our area. For information about the club, including membership, newsletters, upcoming meetings, lectures at Pace University and star parties at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, visit westchesterastronomers.org. Events are free and open to the public. Please note: All in-person club activities are suspended until further notice due to COVID-19 concerns.
