Stargazing

[Nemia]

I just came in from watching the amazing spectacle of five planets and the waning crescent moon in the pre-dawn sky. Very moving to see them all lined up in a wide arch. Little Mercury, fast disappearing in the first light. Bright Venus. Saturn, next to Scorpio. Mars, high up in Libra. Passing Virgo's Spica, I see Jupiter in Leo. SO beautiful.

I'm in awe of the skies and feel connected to the star matter we're all made of and the long chain of star gazers in human history. For me, this is the ideal connection between spiritual practice and intellectual interest. Mythology and science both pull me and I look up to the sky and love it.

I've been interested for ages in astrology (more than four decades) but only when I started star gazing about a year ago things really came together for me. Looking at the ecliptic, I could follow the constellations with my eyes, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer (very hard to see), Leo, Virgo.... They're all so distinctive. It's so easy to understand why our forbears saw a connection between these constant celestial bodies and our lives which change all the time.

Watching only for a year, I'm a beginner, and I use Stellarium, a simple planisphere and some good applications for my smartphone, together with a beginner's sky map and some beginner's books, to find my way around the skies. I'm on 33 parallel North which means that I can see the complete Scorpio which is such a beautiful sight to behold. My dream is to see the Southern constellations...

Any other stargazers here who look at the skies and see science and spirituality converge? What do you see from your spot on our earth? What are your favorite constellations? Do you use binoculars or a telescope? Any tips for good books?

 

[Zephyros]

I love looking up at the sky, and last night was an exceptionally clear night. I tried to wrap my hear around knowing the terms in the past, downloaded a stargazing app and stuff, but I live in a big city and most nights the stars are drowned out by the glare. Despite apps that show you everything I'm still no good at finding constellations. But I still enjoy just looking up, it is a humbling experience. I often make up constellations, like people do with clouds, I just let my imagination wander.

A few times I've been out in the desert at night and there's nothing like the sky there. On a moonless night everything pops out and the stars curve downwards all the way to the horizon and you feel like you're in a huge dome. When it was safer I used to go down to Sinai, and watch the stars every night for hours.

There's something so primal about the experience, a connection to our earliest ancestors and every one since. Everyone has looked up and felt wonder, a truly universal experience.

 

[Nemia]

My husband and I went for our wedding anniversary to the Negev desert, to a truly dark place in the area of Mitzpe Ramon. I looked it up in the Bortle map (dark sky map) of Israel before we went, and it's really nearly optimal viewing conditions there. It was the most amazing feeling ever. We laid down on our yoga mats for hours and just watched, the Milky Way like a living band over our heads.

In our area, the Galilee, there are some dark spots, too, but no comparison with the desert.

My absolute dream (which will never come true) is Hawaii. A star gazer's paradise. Another dream is Lapland in winter, for the Aurora Borealis.

Until maybe two or three generations ago, seeing the Milky Way was a normal part of the night sky. But we have polluted the atmosphere with so much light and glare that it has become elusive.

In the big city, though, you can more easily trace the big constellations because you see only the brightest stars. There's a book for urban stargazers, First Class Stars, which looks interesting. If you can find the Big Dipper and Orion (chetz-ha-zafon), you can find many other constellations, too, under urban lights.

(I make up names for personal constellations, too...)

 

[Tanga]

YES! THE STARS!

I've always been a gazer - with naked eye or through binoculars.
When I was a child, I'd stay out in the backyard in my warmest winter coat with my 3 dogs beside me,
and dream... (the winter coat was used for trips to Europe - I grew up in the tropics in Kenya).
Plus, it was one of the movies about Greek myth and the Titans that inspired me to gaze... 'Clash of the Titans' I think (with Harry Hamlin - I was 8 years old!).
At the end of the movie - the characters are all traced in the constellations.

But - I am not very scientific about my gazing. So sadly I have no studious comments or books to recommend.


But - from where I live now (lucky, we are on a hill in London) I can see Ursa Major (the big dipper).
I love looking at Orion's belt - because the western world knows it as Orion's belt...
But in my father's tradition (Luhyia - from Western Kenya), those are The 3 Sisters - called Nerima. Which is my sister's name.
The Hyades and Pleiades are my favourite (constellation of Taurus?). For some reason - they're so pretty!
The Pleiades make me think of a Sistrum - and Egyptian mythology was my first love
(Plus - a psychic reader once told me I was an alien from the Pleiades! Lol.
I always look up and smile at that memory).


And here now - is the quote which ties in my fascination for the stars and moon - and my
pagan leanings:

"The crystal sphere of silence is surcharged with Deity... The midnight earth sends incense up, sweet with the breath of prayer...
Go out, beneath the naked night - and get religion there!" - Sam Walter Foss.

 

[Nemia]

Oh Tanga, how lovely. The three sisters. And the Pleiades are 7 sisters. They're so beautiful - whenever I see them through my simply binoculars, they look somehow like a harmonious musical chord to me. I have some synesthetic "weird feelings" but they usually involve colours. Only in this case, I associate something visual with a sound. But the Pleiads are really out of this world beautiful.

I wanted to go out and watch Praesepe today, the Beehive in the constellation of Cancer - but the sky was full of clouds.

I'm a Taurus and whenever I see the Bull, I feel happy. Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Cygnus - the Bull, Lion, Scorpion and Swan - I see real animals outlined and that's so GREAT.

I read some books about mythologies and the sky. My Kindle is broken at the moment (I'm waiting for the replacement), so I can't pull out a list of books now. There are also great websites with tips for star hopping. And even Wikipedia has often some mythological background in their entries on different stars and constellations.

I'm not sure I'd call myself Pagan - an important part of my spirituality is Pantheism and I still have strong traces from my Christian upbringing. The stars and the whole beauty of nature made me a Pantheist. Well, I'd call myself an eclectic Pantheist ;-)

 

[Zephyros]

I love the old Clash of the Titans, and Hamlin is so hot! It was long before men were required to be strange mutants in order to be considered attractive, he looks hot in a real way.

But I digress. Although I must say, the "Joppa" in the movie looks nothing like the real city ever did, although Andromeda's Rock is still there.

But yeah, that movie was also an inspiration for me to get interested in Greek myths and then by extension the constellations and their meanings. Tarot, of course, has also been a push in that direction. I hungrily devour any relevant stories I can find and then look at the constellations (at least, in a book if not at the sky). Just looking upwards can be like reading epic tales, even if you ignore the astronomy part.

The sky just makes you feel so small. When I'm in a dark place like the desert and the whole sky is brilliantly lit, I'm often overcome with emotion, it's just so powerful and overwhelming. Like I said I'm not good at finding the constellations but looking at just one star and imagining the impossible distances that separate us, thinking maybe somewhere there's someone else looking back at me, although we can't tell.

 

[earthair]

The sky just makes you feel so small. When I'm in a dark place like the desert and the whole sky is brilliantly lit, I'm often overcome with emotion, it's just so powerful and overwhelming. Like I said I'm not good at finding the constellations but looking at just one star and imagining the impossible distances that separate us, thinking maybe somewhere there's someone else looking back at me, although we can't tell.

Yes Feeling soooo small and insignificant is very comforting. I also feel aware of many other teeeeny tiny creatures all over the universe looking up and thinking the same thing in a web of universal consciousness. Of course some of them probably look up from their intergalactic travel agent's window and are thinking "oooo that looks like a fun solar system, I'd like to book a holiday to 57cgv.89.F next year please"

 

[Emma313]

I just came in from watching the amazing spectacle of five planets and the waning crescent moon in the pre-dawn sky. Very moving to see them all lined up in a wide arch. Little Mercury, fast disappearing in the first light. Bright Venus. Saturn, next to Scorpio. Mars, high up in Libra. Passing Virgo's Spica, I see Jupiter in Leo. SO beautiful.

I'm in awe of the skies and feel connected to the star matter we're all made of and the long chain of star gazers in human history. For me, this is the ideal connection between spiritual practice and intellectual interest. Mythology and science both pull me and I look up to the sky and love it.

I've been interested for ages in astrology (more than four decades) but only when I started star gazing about a year ago things really came together for me. Looking at the ecliptic, I could follow the constellations with my eyes, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer (very hard to see), Leo, Virgo.... They're all so distinctive. It's so easy to understand why our forbears saw a connection between these constant celestial bodies and our lives which change all the time.

Watching only for a year, I'm a beginner, and I use Stellarium, a simple planisphere and some good applications for my smartphone, together with a beginner's sky map and some beginner's books, to find my way around the skies. I'm on 33 parallel North which means that I can see the complete Scorpio which is such a beautiful sight to behold. My dream is to see the Southern constellations...

Any other stargazers here who look at the skies and see science and spirituality converge? What do you see from your spot on our earth? What are your favorite constellations? Do you use binoculars or a telescope? Any tips for good books?

Alot of us can see the beauty including the scientists...most of them wont acknowledge the astrology which is just as beautiful...personally i love the moon venus conjunctions extremely beatiful

 

[Morwenna]

I was enamored of the stars as a child, but not until I was 11 did I actually start tracing constellations. I knew a little bit about astronomy before then, but that's when my interest really started. And from there I began to learn about Greek myths, beginning with the beings that were named in the constellations. And thus started a whole new field of interest.

But the stars themselves: even when I was small I was awestruck by the star-filled sky. But when I started tracing constellations, we lived where the back of our house faced south over fields, and I could see the whole panoply over the year. I latched onto Orion quite early, and to this day I consider him a friend. It was a countrified area of a small town, and there was very little light pollution there and then.

Now I live in a city, and it's rare that I see the stars so well anymore. But I used to go to a Pagan event in a wooded area high up in the hills where there is almost no light pollution, and the stars overhead sometimes would seem near enough to touch! Breathtaking!

I still do go to a medieval camping event every year, where there is plenty of open space, but unfortunately light pollution has caught up with that area. Still, I do as I have done for years: point out the various constellations to my camp mates. At that time of year (early August) the Summer Triangle (Vega, Deneb, Altair) is right overhead. And if you stay up till dawn, you can just see Orion beginning to rise before it gets too light to see it.

I'm at about 42 degrees north, so I can see Scorpio and the upper part of Sagittarius (the "teapot"), on a really dark night, from that campground. What I need to do is find a good viewing spot close to home.

And the star book I trained myself with, from a library, I bought my own copy of with the money my godparents gave me for my 12th birthday. I still have it; and in recent years I added the expanded worldwide edition. It's by H. A. Rey, and it connects the stars in the most logical fashion he could devise to make it easier to trace the constellations.

 

[Nemia]

Morwenna, thank you for the book tip, I'm always on the lookout for new books, especially those who can help me see weaker constellations.

I live 33 degrees north and when I visit my mother who lives on 50 degrees N, I really notice the difference.

I use Stellarium and from time to time, I play with the location window to see how the skies look in another location. Then I raise the tempo of the earth's movement and it's funny to see how the stars move on North Pole (like a carousel - horizontally) and on the Equator (like a ferris wheel - vertically). I don't feel the difference in movement of course but I can see that the sky changes differently here in the South.

The night is nearly over where I live, Scorpio with red Antares is pale now, and Mars is so close! Arcturus not far away. It's great to see three red stars so close to each other.

I only have a simple binocular but for now, that's enough.

I'm outside nearly every night. Having such wonderful hours just looking up. I'm glad we live in an area with okay levels of darkness.