Night Sky Explorations at the Cape Cod National Sea Shore
I was honored to work with write and poet Jeannette Angell and poet Maria Nazos at a free presentation at the Cape Cod National Seashore tonight. They started off with original poetry and prose along with some multi-cultural history of the stories of the night sky.
The sky was hazy, not cooperative at all for my part of the show, but just for posterity, here is my script. We’ll be re running the show on August 19th at 8pm. You can hear an interview with Jeannette and Maria on WOMR.
Rough Script
Thank you Jeannette and Maria!
Welcome to the second part of tonight’s presentation.
I am Paul Cézanne, amateur astronomer, vice president of the Cape Cod Astronomical Society and the self proclaimed official astronomer of North Truro.
One reason I wanted Jeannette and Maria to read and recite was of course that stories, myths and poetry are important, important to the understanding of the night sky. But the second part was actually a trick. I wanted to give your eyes time to adapt to the dark. You eyes’ pupils open fairly rapidly, in about 5 minutes they are fully open in a dark room. But over the next 30 minutes a small chemical change occurs that makes them even more sensitive to the dark.
I want to go over a simple rule for tonight about the dark. I’m going to say something that will probably cause half of you to want to reach into your pockets or bags. But I don’t want you to move. Cell phone. Don’t touch your cell phone! Don’t. I don’t care if it rings, but what I do care is that when you use it, it will glow, and it will glow brightly. And that bit of light will ruin that chemical change that happened inside your eyes over the last half hour.
If you think you might need to make or take a call, please be courteous and move away from the others, and do that now before your phone glows.
And now that your eyes are dark adapted, I just want you to do one thing. Look up.
<pause for 10-30 seconds>
I’m going to guess that right now you are seeing more stars than you see at home, possibly more stars than you have every seen before.
In the Outer Cape we are far from big cities. Oh, you can see a bit of sky glow from Provincetown and maybe the airport behind me. But this is the best dark for hundreds of miles around.
And the dark skies let us appreciate the beauty that the ancients saw, and let us appreciate why stories have been written for eons about the patterns of lights that we see in the sky.
Lets take a look at one of the easiest to recognize summer constellations, the Big Dipper.
<show big dipper, show ursa major>
The big dipper, also knows as Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, is a tremendously important and useful constellation. It is large and bright and tells us how to find North. When black men and women where escaping from slavery in the south, they used what we called the Big Dipper and what they called the Drinking Gourd to find North, which was to find freedom.
There is a song called “Follow the Drinking Gourd” which both instructs and celebrates the escapees journey.
When the sun comes back,
and the first quail calls,
Follow the drinking gourd
The old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
<show how to use the big dipper to find North, and hopefully find the little dipper.>
<Tell about how the little dipper was used a night time clock in the renaissance.>
Most of the star’s stories, however, are ancient. Jeannette told the story of Ariadne. We can see her crown in the sky. At least I hope we can see it. Remember how I said it was dark here? It really isn’t all that dark. It was much darker back then. I know I can see my hand in front of my face, but in a truly dark area, on a moonless night, you wouldn’t be able to do even that and Dionysus’ crown, the gift to Ariadne, would be much more easily seen.
<attempt to show Corona Borealis> arc to Arcturus, to Bootes the herdsman or plowman. To the upper left of Bootes is Corona
If we can see Coma Beranices…. Coma Berenices is one of the few constellations to owe its name to an historical figure, in this case Queen Berenice II of Egypt, who wore to the goddess Aphrodite to sacrifice her long, blonde hair, of which she was extremely proud, if her husband returned safely. Curiously, this constellation is also called Ariadne’s Hair.
Some sky features are easy to find if it is dark enough. Notice this band of light?
<show the milky way>
That is the Milky Way. It is made up of the light of the billions and billions of stars that make up the galaxy that our star, the sun, is part of. In greek mythology, it was caused by milk spilt by Hera when suckling Heracles.
The term Milky Way first appeared in English literature in a poem by Chaucer, called The House of Fame
“See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë
Which men clepeth the Milky Wey,
For hit is whyt.”
If you have a pair of binoculars, and some bug spray, just lie on a blanket some summer night and scan the milky way and see what you can see. Concentrate on Sagittarius, way to the south. (If you live a great deal south of Ptown, you’ll find that Sagitarius is much higher in the sky and you’ll see even more details.) And if you can’t find south, just use the Big Dipper to find North and then turn completely around.
Sagittarius was the Archer to the ancients but today we know of it as the teapot.
<show the handle, lid, body and spout>
And for a bit of fun, you can see that the Milky Way is the steam rising from teapot’s spout!
You might notice that the Milky Way is brightest around Sagittarius. That’s because as we look towards Sagittarius, we are looking towards the center of our galaxy. Indeed, there are so many stars and dust clouds there that astronomers can’t see past it. We can only guess what is on the other side. Of course we can see other galaxies and we’re pretty sure that our galaxy is much like any other.
And just like Provincetown is out on the end of a piece of land, our Sun is located near the end, about 2/3s of the way out one of the spiral arms. So I guess if the Cape was an arm of the Milky Way, the Sun would be in Eastham!
To Sagittarius’ right we see Scorpius, the scorpion. This is a constellation best appreciated in a dark sky. A few years ago I lived in a medium sized city. I could only see one star in Scorpius, the red star Antares.
<show Antares>
I was amazed when I moved to the Outer Cape and first saw Scorpius, it was so beautiful, so full of life and motion, that it was inconceivable that a story hadn’t yet been written about it.
<show claws, curved body, stinger at the end>
Here’s a star pattern you can disagree about. I can show you these five stars, and call it Cygnus the swan.
<show Cygnus, stretched out head>
This is also known as the Northern Cross. I think that is because Northern people were jealous of the Southern Cross and wanted their own. That’s just silly, I’ve seen the Southern Cross and this is far nicer.
But others, especially those with light polluted skies, won’t be able to see the cross but instead will talk about the Summer Triangle.
<Show, Deneb, Vega, and Altair>
This is a good example of why different cultures have different stories. Some will see a triangle and make up a story about that, others will see a cross, or a swan and make up a story about that.
The ancients also noticed that also the stars were fixed in relation to each other, but there a few that moved, they wandered. The greek’s word for “I wander,” planōmai, has changed over to time, in English, to be “planet.”
There really aren’t any planets in the sky tonight. If you were to climb up out of the bowl you just might see Saturn setting in the west and Jupiter rising in the east. Indeed, on you way home driving on Route 6 tonight the bright star you’ll see through your windshield will be Jupiter.
And finally, I’d like to show Queen Cassiopeia, She’s been slowly rising as I’ve talked. Her distinctive W shape is easy to find in late summer, fall and early Winter. She’s W shaped because she’s always drawn sitting on a chair, or her throne. In this area of the sky, in the fall, we can see Cephus, her husband and king, Cetus the sea monster, their daughter Andromeda, and Perseus who rescued her.
If you are interested in continuing along with astronomy, I urge to you look up an astronomy club online. Just google your state’s name and astronomy club. Odds are pretty good that there is one nearby.
The Cape Cod Astronomical Society meets monthly at our observatory at the Dennis/Yarmouth High School. I’m the Vice President and I’d be happy to answer any questions about the organization. And if you are here next week, please stop by the observatory, they have free star parties all summer long. You’ll get to look through their 16” and 18” scopes. And you might see me there also.
One more thing, If you are wondering why your skies at home don’t look like this, look around you at all the lights you have. Does that car dealership really need to be that bright? Do the streetlights in your neighborhood cast some of their light upwards?
You can do you part by turning your lights off or putting them on motion sensors, and getting educated about safety and light pollution. They are not opposites. You can look up the International Dark Sky Association for more information.
Thank you.
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