The song and tune
Under a Winter Star - 2:38 – Leah Salomaa Stars of Ice - 3:44 – Patricia Spero and Kate Cuznar
Under a Winter Star is performed by Leah Salomaa, who is based in London, Ontario. She was classically trained but says that she prefers to sing folk and traditional music, especially with kids. This song was recorded in 2008 as the title track for the above children’s album. The accompanying musicians are Chris Gartner and Sahra Featherstone. In the liner notes Leah describes the song as “traditional” but gives no other indication of its origin and I could find nothing I about it online.
Stars of Ice is an apparently a traditional Chinese midwinter song. It is interpreted here by harpist Patricia Spero with Kate Cuznar on flute, from a 1998 Madacy label album called A Celtic Christmas. (I have many albums with that concise and evocative name.) Madacy is a bargain label that re-uses tracks on several releases, so I do not know if this selection was recorded in that year.
Both Spero and Cuznar are orchestral musicians but in this case I presume that they are studio musicians since even with a magnifying glass I had trouble reading their names on the back cover of the CD case. I do not intend the phrase “studio musician” to be derogatory. Some of the best music I have in my collection is recorded by studio musicians, some of whose names do not appear on the CD at all.
Essay: Enjoying winter stargazing [word count 1484]
The moon revolves slowly around the Earth in an almost circular orbit. Late last night it passed close by the Sun. For astronomers, that is when the official new moon took place. But for most folks, the new moon is the first evening after the official one when we can see its thin crescent in the evening sky. That won’t be this evening because it is still too close to the bright Sun. But tomorrow evening, if your skies are clear, if you look towards the southwest shortly after sundown you should be able to find it. New moons are a lovely sight.
You can make a minor hobby of looking for new moons each month. In fact, you can make a game of it, especially if you have a good view of the horizon towards the west near where you live. Over your lifetime what is the youngest new moon you can find? If you look a day too early you won’t see it. If you look a day too late it will be more beautiful, but it will not be as exciting as finally discovering a hard-to-find tiny white curve. All the data you need to know when and where have your best chance of seeing a really young new moon, for wherever you live, is here, or better yet, here. For some months binoculars help, but if you live in North America you won’t need them tomorrow.
In my case, I live in an urban fourth-floor apartment that has a west-facing balcony with no taller buildings close by. (I’m the writer. I can-put hyphens any-where I want.) I can’t see all the way down to the horizon, but I do get to see a lot of fine sunsets and as many new moons as my forgetfulness about looking and our often-cloudy Victoria weather will allow.
When we see a new moon, or a full moon, or any moon at all, we are sharing the same view as our ancient ancestors. Moon viewing is less affected by light pollution than other types of bare-eye astronomy. That is not to say that we are having the same experience as them; our world-views are quite different from what theirs were.
We are confident that we know what the moon really is because we live in a time when men (they have all been men so far) have walked on its surface. Scientists are now fairly confident that our moon formed when our solar system was still under development 4½ billion years ago when a developing planet the size of Mars crashed into us and merged to form the Earth. That collision also caused debris to scatter into space, much of which gathered together to form our Moon.
That is why we have, by far, the largest moon relative to our planet’s own size in our solar system. Our large, near moon causes our tides. I can remember reading an article when I was in high school in which science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (who was also a real scientist) theorized that those tides played an important role in the evolution of life on Earth. Here is a more recent article from Scientific American about that theory, and it adds that “our moon's gravitational influence also helped ensure that Earth's spin axis and climate remained stable over long timescales. That's arguably just as important as our oceans’ tidal ebb and flow.”
Many of our pagan ancestors also thought that they knew what the moon was and how it worked. Its movement across the sky and changing phases were thought to be related to actions by one or more of the gods or goddesses. But I don’t know how confident they were in their then-current cosmological explanations. Some of the old beliefs seem pretty odd today, and they may also have seemed far-fetched to many of our ancestors, especially when new pagan beliefs were being introduced to replace the old ones.
When we look up with our bare eyes at the sky, day or night, everything we see is what our ancestors saw (except that we get ”bonus” features like airplanes, satellites, contrails, and light pollution.) They also saw our fellow planets of Venus, Jupiter, Mars, occasionally Mercury, and tiny-looking Saturn. Well, we know now that they are fellow-planets. When the ancient astrologers saw those same small lights in the sky they saw messages and portends about the future. When we see an eclipse or a rare naked-eye comet we know what they are and can marvel at the beauty. They just saw bad news.
And winter is the best time to look up at the night sky. Yes, it is cold out, but if you dress up properly, and perhaps bring a sleeping bag and a hot beverage along, you can handle that. But why do I say that this is the best time? Because you can do it as early as 6:00 PM, that’s why. In summer the night might be comfortably warm, but the stargazing doesn’t really get good until after eleven o-clock or so.
Winter viewing is especially good on one of those cold, crisp, cloudless, wind-less nights when there is high atmospheric pressure, allowing the stars to blaze especially steadily and brightly. And also, deciduous trees have lost their leaves. If you want you can look right through them to enjoy the sky with interesting silhouette patterns in the foreground (see above image.)
And it just so happens that this year, this week is also is the best time of the lunar month for star-viewing, because for the next week or so the newish moon will set early, leaving you plenty of watching time before you get sleepy.
I’ve said when it is ideal, but when you get right down to it Mother Nature is the one who will decide when your best opportunities will be. If she’s feeling especially generous she might even give you an aurora borealis. But there are a lot of nights when she’ll give you clouds instead. They can be fantastic to watch just after sunset, but not so good after dark.
If you are in a fairly dark place on a cloudless night look high up at the sky. Can you see something that looks like a big square? Now look for two lines of stars that look like a handle coming from the west to a corner of that square, making it look a little bit like the Big Dipper. Then look for something near the handle that looks like a little cloud. That is the core area of our nearby galaxy called Andromeda. If you do see it that is the farthest thing away from us that you will ever see with your bare eyes.
That light left Andromeda over 2½ million years ago: Another way of looking at that is we are not seeing Andromeda as she is now, but as she was that long ago. Light from the the Sun only takes 8 1/3 minutes to get here, and the reflected light from the Moon gets here in only 1 1/3 seconds. The Andromeda galaxy is even bigger than our own Milky Way galaxy, and it is coming right at us. In 4½ billion years our two galaxies will merge together. Mark your calendar.
When we look up into the sky we see exactly the same stars as our ancient ancestors did, in exactly the same patterns. The patterns now have standardized names. The lovely W shaped constellation Cassiopeia is high overhead. Cygnus is a flying swan, that at first looks like a Christian cross. The bottom of the cross is its long neck, and the arms of the cross are the beginning of its wings. Look carefully and you will see two more fainter stars symmetrically extending the swept back wings to be proportionate to the neck.
The small Lyra constellation in the northwest with its very bright star Vega is home to a tiny fuzzy donut that is really a star that exploded only a few hundred years ago, but you would need a telescope to see it. You can’t miss noticing the tiny but awesome Pleiades, which is technically considered a star cluster not a constellation. The Big Dipper is a star cluster too: It is the butt and tail of Ursus Major, the Big Bear.
My favorite constellation at this time of year is the bold hunter Orion, with his broad shoulders, short tunic, and three stars defining his narrow waist. (He is trying to hide behind the base of the trees in the centre of the above picture.) Now, Orion starts the evening in the southeast and he will be crossing the southern horizon with the other stars all night long. Descending from his waist is a scabbard, and in the middle of that is a fuzzy area. If you have binoculars this is a good time to use them to get a better view than our ancestors ever had. You are looking at a nursery filled with bright little baby stars.
You don’t need to know any of these now-standardized names and patterns of the constellations. In fact, maybe you can have more fun by not knowing what to expect. Just lay back, relax, and let patterns reveal themselves to you. I once volunteered to be sort of an elder at a summer camp for teenagers. They looked up and found The Smartphone, Angel Dust, and the Pile of Dog Poo constellations.
“Bill, what does all this star stuff have to do with the winter solstice?” you might be thinking. Alternatively, you might be more direct: “Bills, stop blithering on about stars and get to the point!” Well, the most prominent star in our heavens is one that our ancestors never knew was the same as the other stars: our Sun. And that they did have a particular interest in, as we will see in future essays in this series. In fact, our sun’s official star name is Sol, and solstice is named after him.
