Nan at Night by Nancy Hoyt
-Thursday the 25th: There’s a great line-up in the sky tonight. Regulus, in Leo the Lion, is to the upper left of the moon, with Saturn, the “Lord of the Rings” farther along the same line.
-Friday the 26th: Once again, Regulus, the moon and Saturn are putting on a show in the west at nightfall. Tonight, Regulus is to the right of the moon while Saturn hangs out to the upper left of our lovely satellite.
-Saturday the 27th: Three’s a charm, look for the golden globe of Saturn to the upper right of the Moon as twilight falls in the west. Regulus, the “heart” of Leo the Lion can be found to the moon’s lower right.
-Sunday the 28th: Look to the northwest late this evening and locate the infamous Big Dipper. The “bowl” is below the handle poised in perfect position to pour water onto the Earth. If you keep your eye on it as night passes, though, it will “refill” itself as it dips low across the northern horizon, then begins to climb back up into the northeast.
-Monday the 29th: Over the next few days, the moon is visible during the afternoon and is low in the south at sun set. Today it is half-lit in its 1st quarter stage.
-Tuesday the 30th: You know summer is truly here when you can see the constellation of Sagittarius rising low in the southeast in early evening. Its brightest stars form the shape of a teapot with puffs of steam above the spout. The Trifid Nebula is responsible for these “puffs” and resolves into three read and blue blobs of gas when analyzed with advanced photography.
-Wednesday the 31st: Cygnus the swan soars high overhead on warm summer nights. Look to the northeast at nightfall and find this cross-shaped constellation, with its long body and neck parallel to the horizon. It stands overhead around 2 or 3 a.m., and noses toward the western horizon at first light.
-Thursday the 1st: 350 years ago in July, 1659, Christiaan Huygens published a book of his observations of Saturn in which he hypothesized that it was encircled by a broad, bright ring. The volume known as Systema Saturnium, also reports the discovery of Titan, one of its many moons.
The half-man, half-horse mythological creature known as a Centaur has always stirred the imagination, in fact J.K. Rowling has continued the legacy by writing a whole forest-full into her modern Harry Potter fantasy series. There are actually two centaurs in the night sky, the well-known Sagittarius, within the zodiac, and the lesser-known Centaurus. Centaurus is only visible from our northern latitudes at this time of year, and even then he is hard to spot sitting low on the southern horizon. Even though Centaurs were said to represent the barbaric “half-human” tribes to the north of ancient Greece, they are usually depicted as intelligent and wise. Centaurus was considered to be Chiron, the wisest of his race, and according to Greek mythology, even wiser than the gods. He was skilled in the arts, hunting and medicine and was a tutor to such illustrious humans as Jason, Achilles, Heracles, and Asclepius. In fact it was supposedly Chiron who first fashioned the constellations and showed mankind how to read the sky! It is said that he even placed a picture of himself in the sky to guide the Argonauts to the Golden Fleece. When the immortal Chiron was accidentally wounded by a poison-tipped arrow loosed by Heracles, he begged the gods to ease his pain by gracing him with death. A bargain was struck which included the release of the Titan Prometheus who supposedly stole fire from the gods. His doom was to be chained to a rock where eternally his liver was devoured by an eagle and then regenerated to be eaten again and again. Zeus finally agreed to let Chiron die but he placed him in the heavens to commemorate him. The constellation of Centaurus is particularly interesting as it contains the Alpha Centauri star system, which is known as the star system nearest to our own solar system…our next-door neighbor!
