An Introduction

 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37)

     My all time favorite New Yorker cartoon shows a rather bored looking couple standing by the window of their urban apartment, wineglasses in hand, with a telescope pointed out the window. The man (while peering through the telescope) is saying to the woman, “You never really know how boring the sky is until you see it up close.” I still get a laugh, thinking of this when I’m showing off one or another of the more esoteric DSOs (deep sky objects) to a non-stargazer. My own daughter once summed up her thoughts on my obsession hobby with the words, “But Dad, all you look at are dots!” After patiently explaining that we also search out star clusters, globulars, and other items of interest, she riposted with, “So, you look at a whole bunch of dots!”

     Fair enough – I myself have felt sympathy with similar sentiments at times. A few years ago when I was still somewhat of a novice to this activity, a vastly more seasoned stargazer was sharing with me the view through his eyepiece of one of the more difficult-to-observe galaxies, NGC something-or-other. I took a good, long look and had no problem seeing the faint object, but confessed that it just didn’t “do anything” for me. At that time I was more interested in the brighter, splashier targets such as the Pleiades, M13 in Hercules, or the Ring Nebula, and didn’t really share others’ passion for the less flamboyant DSOs. “Your problem,” I was wisely (and patiently) told, “is that you’re not using your brain as well as your eyes.” It wasn’t enough, he said, to just look – you had to see. You needed to know what you were looking at, how far away it was, how big, how old, how whatever it was that made this particular object worthy of my attention.

     Basically, I needed to learn that stargazing was a full-body activity, involving not only the eyes, but also the mind. (As I moved on to larger and far heavier telescopes, I soon found out just how many other body parts got involved.) You got out what you put in. The more attention you paid, the more time and effort you invested, and the more you were willing to learn, the greater the payoff. In other words, you needed to be involved. Being a bystander gets one a bystander’s reward. Put a dog in the fight and you’re a player, with a player’s reward.

     I wonder how many people realize that when Jesus answered the question “What is the greatest commandment?”, He changed the wording. Here is what we find in The Law: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, emphasis added) Why the change? Why mind instead of might? Perhaps because Christ (despite what some believe) does not ask or wish for blind faith or mindless obedience. He desires that no one be forced into belief (perhaps implied by the word “might”). He prefers followers with skin in the game. He wants people to come to Him fully engaged and alert, aware of the consequences.

     I did not learn this by becoming an amateur astronomer. But stargazing did help me to find meaning and expression for what I otherwise may never have understood so clearly. To use a most apt metaphor, astronomy has proven itself to be an effective lens, through which to interpret what could have so easily have remained an indigestible mass of data. It brings into sharp focus the Big Questions: Why is there something rather than nothing, and where did it all come from? How and why am I aware of my existence? What is good, and why is there evil? And most importantly of all, how shall we live?

     In the posts that will (over time) follow, I intend to explore the last of these questions through the lens of stargazing, specifically through the device of a year-long visual tour of those stars nearest to the Sun and visible from Howard County, Maryland. Finding these stars is no easy task, and is not quickly accomplished. We are at the mercy of the Earth’s slow revolution in its orbit about the Sun, bringing new stars into view with each passing season. It takes 12 long months to see the full tally of nearby stars. You need to be able to get away from city lights, and to find a relatively dark sky. And besides that, many of these terribly faint objects can only be seen when there is no Moon in the sky, whose light (especially when full) overwhelms all but the brightest stars. Also, cloudy or rainy weather, or even moderately high winds can make viewing impossible, even further limiting the number of nights available for the hunt. You may not personally own a telescope, but this should be in no way a hindrance to your participation. A good pair of binoculars would suffice for at least identifying the location of each star in turn, although in most cases you would not be able to actually see it. Local astronomy clubs such as my own county’s Howard Astronomical League (HAL) offer scheduled public star parties and other outreach events, at which members are more than eager to let others look through their telescopes. And who knows, you might catch the bug yourself and start perusing the catalogs and websites for a good instrument within your price range.

     But the important thing is to get out and look. In the last analysis, telescopes and binoculars, eyepieces and tripods, and perhaps even your very own two eyes, are irrelevant to the search. Discover the observing powers of your heart, soul, and mind.