ROUND THE YEAR WITH THE STARS
I
THE EVENING SKY AT THE VERNAL EQUINOX
Table of Contents The year has its morning no less unmistakable in its characteristic features than the dawn of the day. The earth and all of its inhabitants feel the subtle influences of the dawning year, and Nature awakes at their touch. This annual morning comes when the sun transits the equator, moving north, at the beginning of his long summer tour, about the 20th of March. This is the epoch of the Vernal Equinox, when the springs of life begin, once more, to flow. Then the sun truly rises on the northern hemisphere. Then the mighty world of the north, which Providence has made the chief abode of vital organisms on this planet, rouses itself and shakes off the apathy of winter, and men, animals, and plants, each after their manner, renew their activities, and in many cases their very existence. This annual reawakening is one of the profoundest phenomena of nature, and there are secrets in it which science has not yet penetrated.
Bliss Carman has beautifully pictured the terrestrial charms of the vernal season in his "Spring's Saraband":
"Over the hills of April,
With soft winds hand in hand,
Impassionate and dreamy-eyed
Spring leads her saraband.
Her garments float and gather
And swirl along the plain,
Her headgear is the golden sun,
Her cloak the silver rain."
But why do not the poets see and express the hyperphysical charm of the spring evenings? When the light of the vernal day has faded the stars come forth, and in the quality of their shining reduplicate and heighten the impressions left by the quickening landscapes. More than half is lost if this be missed. But perhaps this side of nature is too transcendent even for poetry. One can behold but not tell it. Emerson has come nearest to its expression, and he puts it in prose:
"The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of the flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn."
CHART I-THE VERNAL EVENING SKY
There was not only poetic but logical fitness in the old English custom, abandoned since 1751, of dating the opening of the year from the last week of March. How can the real birth of the year be imagined to occur when all nature is still deep in slumber under the January snows? The seasons are manifestly the children of the sun, waxing and waning with his strength, and surely that one should be reckoned the eldest which is the first birth of his vivific springtime rays. It seems remarkable that the beginning of the year in ancient times, when men felt more keenly than we do now the symbolism of natural phenomena, was not more frequently fixed at, or near, the Vernal Equinox, and I suspect some defect in our information on this subject. In Attica, George Cornewell Lewis tells us, the year began at the Summer Solstice. But this was to make the second of the sun's seasonal offspring the senior, thus ignoring the just claim of the true heir, the season of buds. In Sparta and Macedonia, according to the same authority, the year began with the Autumnal Equinox, which was still worse, for in summer the year is at the zenith of its life, while in autumn it is already stumbling toward the tomb. In Bootia, at Delphi, and in Bithynia they contradicted nature more decidedly, as we do to-day, by making the year begin at the Winter Solstice, when the chilled world is yet asleep. The Romans adopted this plan eventually, but it is interesting to observe that they had an older custom of beginning the year in March, which many cherished in their domestic life as well as for some legal purposes, after the lawful opening of the year had been fixed on the 1st of January. And finally we have perpetuated the illogical system of absolutely reversing nature's rule in the succession of the seasons by making the year begin about nine days after the Winter Solstice. But in spite of calendars and laws nature prevails, and everybody instinctively feels that the true beginning of the year is in the season when the currents of life resume their youthful flow. At any rate, however it may be with strictly terrestrial affairs, that is the time when the call of the stars becomes the most insistent and irresistible. Accordingly the epoch of the Vernal Equinox is chosen for our opening chapter. But the reader at the commencement of his star-gazing is not confined to this season; he can begin at any time convenient to him.
To avoid misapprehension it is important to point out that our concern is not with that half of the heavens which the sun illumines when he crosses the equator, coming north, at the Vernal Equinox, but with the diametrically opposite half, where in countless multitudes shine his fellow suns-his peers, his inferiors, and his superiors-turning physical night into intellectual day. Accordingly, in Chart I we see not that part of the sky which contains the point called the Vernal Equinox, but the opposite part, where the sun pursues his course when he is declining from the Summer Solstice toward the Autumnal Equinox. The chart represents the appearance of the sky at 10 P.M. on the 20th of March (see Introduction). It also represents the sky as it appears about 11.30 P.M. at the beginning of March, about 9 P.M. the first week of April, and 8 P.M. about April 20th.
Let us, then, near one of these dates and hours, go out-of-doors and transport ourselves to the universe. Why does not everybody feel the thrill that comes to the astronomer when, with eager expectation, he watches the fading sunset light, the slow withdrawal of the vast curtain of illuminated air which for twelve hours has hidden the prodigious marvel of the spangled heavens, and the first peering forth of the great stars? I believe that everybody does feel it when he gives himself the opportunity and abandons his mind to its own reflections-but so few embrace the opportunity or encourage the reflections!
Select, if possible, a high place, where the eyes can range round the whole horizon unobstructed. Then try to seize the entire view at once, as one glances for the first time at the map of a new country. Get the ensemble by sweeping all around the sky, not pausing to note details, but catching at a glance the location of the brighter stars and those that form striking groups. Note where the Milky Way runs, a faint, silvery zone at this season, arched across the western half of the firmament, hanging like starry gossamers in places, brilliant in the northwest, but becoming fainter as it dips toward the southwestern horizon-a mere anticipation of its summer splendor, hiding its light and fading away as it approaches the imperial presence of Sirius. Notice the great hexagon of first magnitude stars that surrounds Orion in the west-Sirius, Rigel, Aldebaran, Capella, Castor and Pollux, and Procyon marking the angles, and Betelgeuse glittering not far from the centre of the figure. Observe Regulus with the "Sickle" of Leo on the meridian. Look for the glimmer of the "Beehive" in Cancer, between Gemini and Leo, and for the pentangular head of Hydra beneath it. Still lower you will see the reddish gleam of the starry serpent's heart, Cor Hydræ, or Alphard, and then, running eastward, and dipping ever nearer the horizon, the long, winding line of his stars passing under the overset cup of Crater and the quadrilateral of Corvus, the "Crow," until they disappear, unended, in the southeast, for from mid-heaven to the horizon there is not space enough to display all of these beautiful coils, which take a kind of life as you watch them.
Away over in the east, close to the ecliptic, you will see Virgo with her diamond, Spica, flashing in her hand. You are now facing east; to your left, then, north of Spica, glows great Arcturus, with his attendants shaping the figure of Boötes. Of Arcturus, a star that among a million finds no rival, we shall speak more particularly elsewhere. Farther to the left, beyond Boötes, shines the exquisite "Northern Crown," Corona Borealis. That too will claim attention in a later chapter. The square of Hercules is just above the horizon below the Crown in the northeast, and to its left, as you face north, is seen the diamond-shaped head of Draco, the "Great Dragon" that Athena was fabled to have entangled with the axis of the world. His stars wind upward between the "Dippers"-the "Little Dipper," which has the Polestar at the end of its handle, and the "Great Dipper," which, brim downward, shines east of the meridian, almost as high as the zenith, if you are as far north as 40° or more. The handle of the "Great Dipper" is the tail of Ursa Major, who treads lumberingly about the pole, with his back downward, his head out-thrust west of the meridian, and his feet, marked by three striking pairs of stars, up in the middle of the sky. On the meridian south of Ursa Major stands the "Sickle" of Leo already mentioned. Away round in the northwest, beyond Capella, are Perseus and Cassiopeia, immersed in the Milky Way.
Having fixed the location and general appearance of all these constellations in the...
