In trying times, gifts of nature that we often ignore can bring solace

The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveler.

So wrote the English poet John Milton, whose life spanned most of the 17th century, a politically, socially and religiously tumultuous period in his country.

Milton’s words strike a chord with me. It was during a glum period in my own life that I came to appreciate the stars. Each night I would gaze from a dormer window in my attic out over the rooftops.

One extremely bright star, framed by the window, particularly caught my attention. Sirius, I later learned, is the brightest star in the night sky. It was mesmerizing, and one night I tore the attic apart to find a notmuch-used, flimsy telescope for a closer look.

To the naked eye, Sirius looks corpulent, fatter than other stars. But through a telescope, they all look pretty much the same — some brighter than others, some tinted blue, yellow or orange instead of pure white, but all still just tiny points of bright light.

Sirius was rather low over the rooftops, and after a while I turned the scope a little higher and scanned, somewhat too quickly, to the right.

I caught a quick glimpse of something odd and turned back to get a better look. It took some doing to find it, because it wasn’t at all bright. But finally, a greenish-grayish faintly glowing cloud with stars encrusted in it appeared in the lens.

I had never seen anything like it and wasn’t sure what it was. I later learned, I had stumbled upon the Orion Nebula, a vast gaseous cloud, 24 light years wide, that is a birthplace for stars.

The constellation Orion, visible in autumn and winter, is named for a Greek mythological hunter.

Depending on the chosen tradition, he is depicted as taking aim with a bow and arrow or holding a club overhead and a shield.

Picture four stars forming an upright rectangular box, with a yellow or orange star at the upper-left corner. Inside, about halfway down, are three stars forming a diagonal line (the hunter’s belt) and beneath that three stars standing perpendicular (the hunter’s sword).

In traditional Chinese astronomy, Orion straddles the White Tiger of the West and the Bird of the South quadrants of the sky. It’s known in Chinese as the Hunter Constellation.

The nebula, in the middle of the three stars that form the sword, is visible — as a faint, fuzzy light — to the naked eye on a clear, dark night.

On a winter’s night you’ll find the constellation if you look south at about 80 to 85 degrees overhead. Look for the belt and sword.

Stumbling across the Orion Nebula stirred a love for astronomy in me. Years later, when my children were young, we’d sometimes spend time looking at the stars and identifying different constellations. Orion was a favorite — we used to call him “The Big Guy”.

For me personally, the permanence of these stars and figures in the sky, known by ancient peoples and still known today, has been reassuring.

But that reassurance took a blow about a month ago. The luminosity of Betelguese, the yellowish star at the upper left of Orion, has greatly diminished recently, and astrophysicists predict this signals it’s heading for death. The supernova — a luminous explosion — is expected to be so strong that its cataclysmic flash of light would be visible day and night for an extended period.

So, cosmologically speaking, Betelgeuse’s death is imminent, they say ... some time in the next 100,000 years.