Pilgrimage to the Stars

Ye goon to Caunterbury – God yow speede, The blissful martir quite yow youre meede!

And wel I woot, as ye goon by the weye,

Ye shapen yow to talen and to pleye;

For trewely, confort ne myrthe is noon To ride by the weye doumb as a stoon.

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, lines 769-74

     Nearly 700 years ago Geoffrey Chaucer, if we can take him at his word, joined a troop of pilgrims on a bright spring day at the Tabard Inn in Southwerk outside London on their way to Canterbury Cathedral. Pilgrimages to that holy place were common in 14th Century England, as it was the site of the blessed shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, beloved of the common man, martyred centuries earlier in the cause of the curtailment of arbitrary royal power in Medieval society. That pilgrimage became the framework for one of the greatest of all works in English Literature (and certainly one of my all time favorite books), The Canterbury Tales.

     From the beginning, pilgrimages were meant to be a time for reflection, for using the opportunity afforded by removing one’s self from the everyday and the routine to dig deep within one’s soul and bring much-needed light to the dusty and neglected corners thereof. They were, and remain today, useful as an aid in sharpening one’s resolve, when they are undertaken in fulfillment of a vow. They can serve as a means of focusing attention. The great poet T.S. Eliot, as so often is the case, perhaps expressed this best in his lines penned upon arrival at the chapel of Little Gidding: “You are not here to verify / Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity / Or carry report. You are here to kneel / Where prayer has been valid.”

     I hope to convince you in these postings that one does not need to physically travel to distant places to go on a pilgrimage. By means of a backyard telescope, it is possible to transport yourself to locations undreamed of by Chaucer’s pilgrims – to the very heavens themselves (or at the least, to the stars). I intend to assume the part of Chaucer’s Hooste, and guide you on a pilgrimage to those stars in our sky that lie nearest of all to us.

"Set your mind on things that are above, and not on things on the Earth." (Colossians 3:2)

     Now so often we stargazers expend huge amounts of effort, employing giant light buckets, expensive eyepieces, averted vision, and dogged determination (and a wee bit of self delusion) in hopes of capturing a few photons from the most distant Deep Sky Objects possible. And the rewards of doing so are undoubtable. (Although, try to convince a skeptical non-stargazing family member of that, after they’ve maybe, possibly (though probably not) seen a Faint Fuzzy at the ragged edge of perceptibility, with you alongside excitedly explaining to your less-than impressed spouse, daughter, best friend, whatever, that they’re what seeing is light that’s left some distant galaxy umpteen bazillion years ago.) But, strangely enough, all too few of us expend even a fraction of that effort in observing those objects that are closest to our own Solar System. In fact, I’d wager that the overwhelming majority of amateur astronomers couldn’t name even half of the dozen or so of our nearest stellar neighbors if their life depended on it.

(Note that only those stars visible from Maryland, USA, are shown.)

     Now why is that? Some might respond that all one sees for your effort is a faint dot, which may or may not actually be the faint dot you were looking for. But is that really any worse than the barely perceptible wisp of light from NGC whatever? (I can distinctly recall someone at one star party describing the galaxy he was showing me as, “It’s not quite as dark near the center of the field of view as at the edges… See? That’s it!”)

     Which brings us to this blog. There are actually huge rewards for tracking down and observing those stars closest to our own solar system. The first is the challenge itself. Would anyone honestly consider sports fishing to be any fun if all the fish were to just jump at every hook tossed in their direction? No, the truth is that the frustration of an afternoon spent without a single bite adds to the enjoyment of that other day when you’ve caught your limit. Or (be honest with yourself now), would you really want your favorite team to crush the opposition by an obscene point spread in every matchup? No, of course not. It’s the close game and the nail-biter that the True Fan most appreciates. And in the same way, there’s a much deeper satisfaction for the die-hard observer after he struggles for half a night to find that elusive object than if he had spotted it in two seconds.

     Secondly, the stars nearest to our sun are intrinsically interesting in their own right. Nearly the entire spectrum of stellar types is represented among them, from brown, red or white dwarfs to blue-white super-suns, from solitary stars like our own Sun to stellar associations with multiple partners. There are young stars just beginning their life cycles, and used-up stellar husks at the end of the line, all their really interesting years behind them.

     And lastly, there is the objective value to knowing at least something about our stellar neighborhood. These stars are, after all, right in our own back yard. We ought to be interested in our immediate environment. (to be continued...)