Poetry in the sky

Night sky inspires many literary references

I’m late for February and that’s especially awkward because it’s a short month. My apologies.

I usually like to talk of some aspect of the sky that we can see. However, as I did in January of 2013, I will speak of the poetry of the skies. In that article, I apologized for being late, so this is really a repeat. In reference to his “Rocky Mountain High” song, John Denver, in talking about a bright meteor, says, “It’s a Colorado Rocky Mountain High, I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky.”

Bill Keane, in “The Family Circus” has the children looking up at the night sky with all its stars, and saying “God has all his lights turned on so we’ll know he’s home.”

Stuart Atkinson in “The Final Pilgrims” wrote, regarding a repair trip to Hubble, the space telescope, “Sleep now, we have come to heal you; when you wake, your weary eyes will be bright again.”

Finally, in “Locksley Hall,” Alfred Lord Tennyson writes “Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising in the mellow shade, glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in the silver braid.” The Pleiads, or Seven Sisters, are a tiny dipper, seen easily with the naked eye in the southwest sky at about 9 p.m.

Visiting the night sky certainly gives us new knowledge, but it can also cause us to be inspired and to be instilled with peace. It causes great writers of poetry and prose to be both humbled and lofted to write wondrous lines.

The night sky is one of the great places we can visit, with no entrance fee, on our own time, and either in our own privacy or with a friend or friends. If there were an admission, it would be worth the price for all of us.

So what is in the sky to see this month of February?

Venus is still the queen of the night sky. She is hugely bright in the west-southwest. She’s almost as bright as Venus can get. In fact, with careful locating, Venus can be seen high in the south in mid-afternoon but don’t look at the sun. If you have a very good dark site, it is possible to show that Venus can actually cast a shadow. By month’s end, Venus sets about two hours and 45 minutes after the sun.

With all this attention paid to Venus, we mustn’t forget Mars to the upper left and much dimmer. It is slowly getting further from Venus, and by the end of the month, sets about 50 minutes after Venus. Jupiter is now the “intermediate” planet; in the last couple of months, we called it a morning planet. It now rises in the east at about 11 p.m., but even two hours earlier by the end of the month. Of course it can still be seen as a morning planet, located high in the south by the wee hours. As Jupiter nears its high point in the south, Saturn rises in the southeast. Mercury is present low in the predawn sky, but it rises later each day and is no longer visible after Feb. 24.

Don’t forget to visit Orion in the southwest as it slowly begins to leave us for another year.

See you in March.