The brightest star in the sky this time of year is Arcturus which is easily identified by continuing the curve of the Big Dipper’s handle.
May and June skies bring a period of relative celestial calm. Gone are the dazzling stars of winter and early spring, and yet to come is summer’s glowing band of the Milky Way.
Contemplate the blackness overhead. What do you see, what do you feel?
The brightest star in the sky this time of year is Arcturus which is easily identified by continuing the curve of the Big Dipper’s handle. That curves lands on 37 light-year distant Arcturus. Continue the curve and Spica, another bright star, is found. To the west of Arcturus lies Denebola, the dimmest of these three stars. Within this region not many stars pop out to the unaided eye, but something else lurks always unseen to casual stargazers. Past the few stars spotted, which all lie a few tens to a few hundred light-years from our little world, hides a large cluster of galaxies at a distance between 10 and 70 million light-years. This is the “Realm of the Galaxies” studied extensively by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Imagine what you can’t see, but know what lies above you. Beyond the few seeable stars lie the unseeable thousands of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billion of stars. Now, what do you feel?
The story above first appeared in our May / June 2023 issue.
