City skies are always at their most fine in the winter.
It’s a strange thing, a silver lining of sorts, star-gazing in New York. It’s often easier, in some ways, than in dark-sky country – the few stars and planets bright enough to be seen stand out against a bare, inky background, making constellations instantly recognizable and stars easily identified.
I’m fortunate to live where I have an unobstructed and nearly due south view from my neighborhood, which in deep winter – late December through mid-March – offers the best viewing of the winter stars, as I like to call them, as they reach their culmination – the highest point in their nightly traverse across the sky.
Star-gazing is always enhanced by the sharp, crisp, low-humidity air of winter, increasing the brilliance of the celestial host, and nowhere is this more evident than in the city, and most especially in the timeless pairing of Sirius and Orion.
Sirius is the brightest star – “fixed star,” as the astronomers of Mediterranean antiquity called it, that is, not a planet (“planet” in classical Greek literally means “wanderer” – they could not know these meandering lights were fellow circlers around the sun like our own planet, but they could see the irregular paths they drew through sky, so distinct from the constant, unvarying constellations that shine like pinhole pricks made in a rigid black lampshade, spun round and round again by a child’s finger, admitting the lamp light through).
Orion is a large constellation, and one of the few that actually looks like a recognizable figure: an upright man facing west, as if walking through the sky on his nightly trip. Many traditional societies called Orion “The Hunter,” but in ancient Egypt Orion represented the peaceful god Osiris, one of the most central deities in their long-enduring pantheon. In other cultures the Hunter is paired with Sirius who represents his hunting dog, whereas in Egypt this star represented Isis, fiercely faithful and devoted spouse to Osiris.
Orion is also one of the brightest constellations, followed by Sirius who appears to be following him in their nightly route, easily identified by imagining a long straight line, running through Orion’s famous belt, and a little downward and behind his walking figure until you see the unmistakable brilliance of the brightest star.
The result is a dazzling winter feast, unrivaled at any other time of year, one that can give the legendary sparkling skyline of this city a run for its money. But all that is passing now. As the days grow longer, these stars are increasingly westerly before the sky is dark enough to allow their visibility. Within the next few weeks I will once again see Orion, walking away into the west, soon after sunset, before he and his companion stars vanish behind the brilliance of the sun. It won’t be until late summer that they will start to emerge, one by one, in the early pre-dawn hours in the east, where I do not have a vantage point to easily view them.
It’s autumn that they represent to me, when the shortening days allow me to see them as they slowly return, night by night, to their high southerly position, ultimately to take their place again as the crown of winter.
Winter to spring; spring to summer; summer to fall and winter again. It is time to say goodnight to the winter stars. I find my heart missing them already, even knowing they will return, as I always do when the days lengthen and the trees leaf out in spring. But I will carry the memory of their dazzling beauty with me, to cool the blazing summer days with their winter fire.