I like stargazing. There. That’s the post.
When I first wrote this post, it was supposed to be for two Mondays ago but for various reasons it got pushed back. Originally, it would have been a year almost to the day since I wrote my first stargazing post and the idea was to reflect a little on my relationship with the sky, with the outdoors and with the person on Twitter who threw a tantrum over a BBC presenter who was astounded at what you could see with the naked eye, because it was “dim” and “patronising” and “medieval”.
Is that what’s it’s going to be now? No idea. I just want to talk aimlessly about the stars. I’ve always had a vague interest in the sky but it was vague to the point of not having a clue. When we got our first modern PC when I was 13 or 14, I’m reasonably sure it came with – or maybe I bought – a programme that had a map of the stars. On a CD. I’ve been able to recognise the Plough and Cassiopeia for a long time but that was about the limits of my understanding of the heavens. Then in November 2021, I suddenly took an interest, did my Rebel Stargazer badge and wrote about it in February 2022. And now I’ve had a year to think about that and progress that.
In that post, I threatened to buy a telescope. I haven’t done so. Half-decent ones are expensive and realistically, I’d only use it in the garden. Taking it to the top of the road would give me better views but people would also think I’m weird. I’m satisfied with what I can see with my stargazing app and my bare eyes. I’ve kept it up, you know. I’ve become so much more attuned to the changing of the days. I know that by the end of January, it’s visibly lighter when I go outside for my walk straight after work at 5pm. By now, middle of February, I have to wait an hour or two to go out if I want to see the stars. Saturn has now vanished below the horizon – or has done by the time I can see anything, anyway. Mars is visibly red. Venus is very bright. Jupiter has moved from where I’m used to seeing him. Now by the time it gets dark, I can see Sirius which twinkles an actual rainbow of colours and Fomalhaut, which used to be kind of a guide down my road, floating dead ahead, has been invisible all winter.
I hoped I’d get to learn the summer sky as well but I’d underestimated how long it takes to get dark. No, the only time I stargazed in the summer was when I was camping. I’d crawl out of my tent about ten o’clock, wearing my camp blanket for warmth and go and wander around the campsite, head tilted upwards. Find somewhere to lie on the ground and look upwards, somewhere preferably where I wasn’t going to get trodden on. I did learn some new stars and some new constellations but stargazing is so much easier to get into and to fall in love with in the winter. Now I find I’m disappointed by light evenings.
The other point I’d like to make about stargazing is that outdoorsy types don’t seem to take much interest in it. Hiking and camping, yes. I like hiking and camping – not hiking quite as far as the outdoorsy types I see on social media hike – but when you’ve finished, when you’ve put your ultralight tent up and your warm expensive ultralight evening layers, you could look up at the sky and see specific stars and constellations instead of just a sea of tiny twinkling lights. There’s a whole world up there – an inverted outdoors covering everything you hike and camp on, a whole new dimension to the outdoors and so few people seem interested in learning about it. In the same way that people learn to recognise trees and birds and birdsong, don’t you want to learn to recognise the stars? Someone said in a Facebook group today that they set themself a challenge of noticing something they don’t know and looking it up when they get home, which makes them feel more connected and means the walk is about more than just plain walking. Same goes for the stars.
I guess there’s an element of content. It’s hard to take good photos of the sky and it’s hard to take photos of yourself looking at the sky when it’s dark. I can take photos with my phone when it’s clear and the stars are bright but by the time I’ve fiddled with them to get the points of light to really show, I’ve also made the sky look grainy and streaky and weird. My own fault for not buying a telescope with a thing to attach it to a camera, I guess.
Anyway, my point was mostly that the sky is under-appreciated. That you can’t blame even a fancy BBC presenter for being amazed at what you can see with the naked eye, unless that presenter is Dr Brian Cox or Dara O Briain. So few of us have ever really realised what’s above us, let alone how much we can see without expensive equipment. I guess we’re not night owls, most of us, not really. Yes, you can see planets! This winter, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus have all been visible from my back garden – well, Mars has and the other three have been visible from my scrap of front garden. That’s four planets. That’s half the solar system, which I can see with my deficient eyes just by taking three steps from one of my doors. I’ve seen the ISS from the top of my road – if it’s very bright and moving fast and doesn’t have red and green flashing lights, it’s probably the International Space Station.
I can see Sirius which flickers like a rainbow in a mirrorball. It really does, it’s incredible. Sirius is the brightest star (technically it’s two stars; Sirius is a binary star) in Earth’s sky and it’s 8.6 lightyears away. That’s 50,556,179,654,736 miles away. That’s – I think – 50 trillion miles away, which is so far that my mind can’t comprehend that as a real number and Wikipedia describes it as “Sirius appears bright because of its intrinsic luminosity and its proximity to the Solar System”. Proximity! 50 trillion miles away is close!
As for Deneb, which is the 19th brightest star in the sky, that’s 2,600 lightyears away. What’s that in miles? 15,284,426,407,245,866 miles. That’s 15 quadrillion miles away – now we really are making these up – and I can see it from the top of my road and instead of saying “That’s 15 quadrillion miles away and it breaks my brain and aren’t eyes amazing and isn’t the sky astonishing?” I say “Oh yeah, Deneb, of course, I knew that”. So yes, it’s not “dim” or “patronising” or “medieval” to be astonished at what you can see with the naked eye. If anything, we’re nowhere near astonished enough.
So I’m going to end this rambling pointless post with this:
Next time you’re camping, next time you’re coming home after dark, next time it’s clear if you don’t live in a massively light-polluted city, just stop for five minutes. Just stand and look up at the sky for five minutes and see how much you can see. Maybe download a stargazing app in readiness – I use (free) Skyview Lite but there are lots of options – and start to realise how much you can see.