THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
207-780-4249 www.usm.maine.edu/planet
70 Falmouth Street Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N 70.2667° W
Founded January 1970
Julian date: 2457645.16
"You're alive....you want to be more alive."
-George Bernard Shaw
*THE DAILY ASTRONOMER*
*Tuesday, September 13, 2016*
*Orion in the Morning!*
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Thanks to Radio Astronomy panelist Heidi V
for suggesting the DA about the dark matter galaxy.
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4:00 a.m. is the only known conduit into the ethereal realm where most
mortals dare not venture. Poised uneasily between the midnight revels
and awakening dawn, the 4:00 a.m. hour affords any intrepid -and sleep
deprived- sky watcher the opportunity to truly behold the infinite above.
During the other 23 hours, the moments dissolve rapidly into each other.
During this 4 am hour, they loiter about, like motes suspended in a shaft
of sunlight. At this this time of year, during the 4 am hour, Orion
rises magnificently in the east., preceded by the elegant Pleiades Star
Cluster. Tennyson described them as being "like fireflies tangled in a
silver braid." To Orion, however, they are,and have always been, a
gathering of alluring young women. Through the centuries, he has pursued
them in desperate earnest, but has remained frustrated by their
elusiveness. It is said that Zeus even transformed them into swans to
protect them from the lustful Orion, after he, himself, had enjoyed
clandestine liaisons with them. Despite this transfiguration, Orion
persists in his infatuation. He follows them this morning, as he has done
for thousands of years.
*Orion the Hunter rising in the pre-dawn sky. In mid September, Orion
looms high **in the east by the onset of twilight, heralding the return of
cooler weather and longernights. Image: Michael Rael*
Although we know today that an array of disparate stars comprise the Orion
pattern, the uber-human those stars represent continues to exercise a
fascination over us. Intellectually, we understand that Orion is a mere
figment that would dissipate upon approach. Intuitively, he serves as the
ancient world's emissary, connecting our modern society with those
communities that first took root in the Fertile Crescent, the
fog-enshrouded northern hinterlands, and in various locales around the
world. Though he has assumed various identities, Orion's structure has
always been all too humanoid: the Long Sash of the Dakotas; the primeval
Nimrod, the Egyptian Osiris, God of the Dead, and myriad other characters
which long lost generations of humans elevated to the highest station: the
night sky. Orion disquiets us with reminders of our mortality. Even
over a life fully lived, Orion's component stars scarcely budge. The
stars themselves do move rapidly and traverse millions upon millions of
miles in an Earth century, but they are so remote, these motions are
slight. Were it not for the discerning astronomers who had to first
dismantle Orion in order to discern him, we could easily believe the stars
are fixed and the patterns they form eternal.
*Orion the Hunter as depicted in Johann Bayer's *
*Uranometria (1603). Here, Orion faces away from Taurus*
*the Bull. Most depictions show Orion confronting the*
*Taurus. *
Orion is not eternal. Over the course of tens of thousands of years, its
shape will become distorted and the superhuman will all but vanish in the
star field. A few hundred thousand years from now, there'll be little
left of him in the sky, as our solar system proceeds to other parts of the
galaxy along its 225-million year long circuit around the Milky Way.
Orion will perish gradually, just as it formed gradually in the skies that
loomed over the swarms of Earth's hunter gatherers.
For this reason, perhaps, the 4 am hour is the best time to view Orion. As
our sliver of the planet dozes just prior to turning toward our parent
star, one may stand before the grand hunter when time's otherwise
inexorable glow seems to abate. The conduit into the eternal opens
briefly so as to remind the simple star gazer nobody can ever truly be
displaced from the cosmos.