Starlight

These evenings Venus blazes like a bright lamp in the Western sky, while high in the North-East Arcturus glows red like an ember far out from the tail of the Plough. There are other patterns in the sky, but these are the ones I can see from my vantage points in the night, and the ones that mark an arc of significance across the skyscape. 

I watch Venus sink behind a hill where I know the sea stretches out to the West. But Arcturus remains high above. The  planet moves through the night and is gone. The star moves too, but slowly and seems to remain. I know where each of them are, night after night, even when there is cloud. But only for now. Venus will eventually be absent, then re-appear in the East before dawn. Arcturus will fade in the summer nights. Things change. 

Or appear to affect us differently. Bright lights will fade, diffuse, or be extinguished. The world will have changed. Yet it will be the same. Journeys through or beyond the world will have been made. Identities transformed. Recognitions lost. Though nothing is lost. New things found. Though they were never lost.  

May all your lights continue to shine brightly and those that go out remain bright in memory.

Spring

The crescent waxing moon in the west the other night was tinged with red. It was some time after sunset so I didn't expect reflected light from that. Mars was also visible not far off and my star-gazing was done in a magical atmosphere as the sky seemed suffused with a misty light that did not prevent the stars from being seen but put them into soft focus. Orion, which I have marked in the sky through the winter, has now sunk below the horizon, though my star map tells me Betelgeuse should still be visible low on the horizon. Although the Plough will continue to be prominent, pointing to the the North Star, the shorter, lighter nights to come will cause most of the stars to fade into the background even where they are still visible.

Among the things to do in the garden as the weather improves, I have removed the panels from the front of our garage which allow the swallows, when they arrive, to access their usual nesting place in the garage roof space. Unlike the martens who build their nests in the eaves of the main house, swallows like an enclosed space, so we always make sure they can get in by removing the panels which we put back when they have left before the winter.

The cowslips have put on a good show in the wild garden this year and as apple blossom begins to show on the tree Spring seems to be advancing fast in clear bright weather though it remains cold at night. The flowers of Yellow Archangel are also magnificent. Some years there a very few or none at all although the variegated green-white leaves always put on a good show. But every few years, as now, the yellow flowers blossom in profusion. Along with the celandines they turn the garden into a blaze of yellow against the green. Now there are bluebells too and soon they will add their own contribution to the palette.

A Winter Night

The Constellation of Orion

The light fades early, dimming to mistiness as the dark creeps in behind it, chilling the afternoon. On a ridge to the West the last pale rays of sunlight suffuse the sky and the trees are starkly outlined black on silver-grey until this, too, fades and the night shades out the day.

Then the stars … much later, after midnight, when the village streetlights turn off … glitter against the sable sky and their different colours can be perceived. Looking South, Sirius is silver-blue below the belt of Orion, Betelgeuse and Aldabaran red-tinged above it. Looking North, the Plough is a constant presence throughout the year with its hook pointing to Polaris, the North Star, around which, from this part of the Earth, all the stars turn. Between these the misty path of the Milky Way is invisible when the street lights are on even here, some distance away from the road. But now it reveals itself like some mystery emerging from the dark.

On the horizon the half-full Moon hangs, illuminating that same western ridge where the sunlight dimmed behind trees. From somewhere over there an owl calls, then another further down the valley. As the Moon, too, sinks behind the hill the blaze of the stars is brighter still and the path of the Milky Way so clear that it seems to flow across the sky like a river. Still the owls call, but I retreat from the chill of the night to drift into sleep until dawn.

Even the weariest river ....

In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country, and their own natural homes which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.

(One of the marginal glosses appended by Coleridge to The Ancient Mariner.)

STARS

Our local council, along with many others, recently decided on grounds both of cutting costs and lowering its ‘carbon footprint’, to turn off street lighting out of the towns and larger villages after midnight. This came into effect this month. Where I live, on the edge of a village with fields behind the house, we only have a few low-level lights along the lane down to the main road through the village. But the sodium lights along that road  throw up an orange glare into the sky which means that only brighter stars are visible.

{For a discussion of the relative merits of different kinds of street lighting go HERE}

Last night, the sky was open with no cloud. I went outside after the lights had switched off. It was dark except for the starlight. A late moon was rising over the hill behind the house but at just past the last quarter so not particularly bright and was not in the part of the sky I could see. In the north the Plough hung low in the sky like a huge question mark lying on its side and pointing to the Pole Star. Nearby Arcturus gleamed dully red. Directly above, Cassiopeia’s Chair shone a bright silver against the background of the Milky Way streaking the sable sky with white. As the winter stars gather and Orion rises in the south, these clear nights after midnight will be a delight. These are jewels of great value costing nothing except the inconvenience of a dark street when returning home late on a moonless night. A price I will gladly pay for a cosmos of light.