Cast your eye to the southern sky

The sagittarius region boasts a rich collection of nebulae and star clusters. - john mcphee

IT'S LUCKY FOR modern stargazers that comet hunter Charles Messier was an organized sort of chap.

When the 18th century French astronomer came across something that later could be mistaken for a comet, down it went into his notebook. His list of things to ignore evolved into a valuable record of the sky's most impressive sights, from M1 to M110.

The southern horizon in summer boasts a treasure trove of these objects, particularly in the constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius. This area is packed with star clusters and clouds of glowing gas and dust called nebulae.

This month marks prime-time viewing for Scorpius although it crawls pretty low along the horizon in the northern hemisphere. Scorpius is named for the venomous desert arachnid that, in Roman mythology, killed Orion, the glittering hunter whose constellation haunts the winter skies far away from his mortal enemy.

Unlike a lot of constellations, Scorpius doesn't require much of an imaginative leap to see the creature behind its' name. The scorpion hangs just above the southern horizon - a fishhook or the letter J also comes to mind.

At the heart of Scorpius beats Antares, the star whose red hue inspired the Romans to name it the "rival of Mars." About 500 of our suns could fit into Antares, a red giant star about 500 light-years away.

But time is running out for this huge ball of gas. Its density is less than one-millionth that of our Sun and when it finally runs out of fuel, “Antares will collapse and explode in a supernova - at which time its brightness will rival that of the rest of our galaxy put together,” according to NASA scientists.

If you train a pair of binoculars on Antares, you may notice a hazy patch in the same field of view to the right. That's M4, a group of stars called a globular cluster. M4 may look like Antares' neighbour but this incredibly dense group containing hundreds of thousands of stars lies 7,500 light-years from Earth.

Saturn, Mars and the star Antares line up in the constellation Scorpius on Aug. 24, 2016. That line through Antares is a satellite. - john mcohee

As with all globulars, it takes a larger telescope to make out individual stars in M4. In my 90-millimetre scope, the foggy patch takes on a sort of pebbly appearance, particularly on a night of good "seeing" - that is, when the atmosphere is steady and there's little haze in the air.

A more satisfying sight in binoculars and small scopes are looser collections of stars called open clusters. Scorpius boasts a couple of beauties, M7 and M6. They lie just above the tail of the scorpion. On a moonless night of great seeing, M7 shines like a scattering of jewels in my 10x50 binoculars. I can also make out the nebula in M6.

You can often get a better view of fainter objects like nebulae if you don't look right at them. Avert your eyes slightly to the side and a more distinct image pops into view. This technique takes advantage of more light-sensitive areas on the sides of the retina.

Whatever part of the eye you use, it’s the best time of year to soak up the celestial riches at the heart of our home galaxy.

Back roads and celestial highways

C’mon now child, we’re gonna go for a ride
Car wheels on a gravel road.
Lucinda Williams

A series of long exposures captures the glow of fireflies on a country road in nova scotia. - john mcphee

One of my favourite sounds is that first crunch of dirt when you move from pavement to a country road.
Dirt roads take you to places where you’re bound to find silence and trees, lakes dotted by pickerel weed, the ghostly path of the Milky Way. 
Nova Scotia has some great dirt roads. They may be paved by now but I remember watching the dust trails behind the car as we drove to our cabin near Gillis Lake in Cape Breton. In my mind, a drive in the car was synonymous with  a stop at one store or another. So my Gillis Lake memories are flavoured by the taste of lime rickey and potato chips. (Total cost: 25 cents).

Back road rambling
When we moved from Cape Breton to the mainland, I was introduced to the hilly north-south roads of the Annapolis Valley. Most of them are paved but there are still a lot of good old gravel roads that take you from the lowlands to the Fundy shore.
Then there are the former logging roads that criss-cross the wilderness of Kejimkujik National Park.
(Let me pause here to express my bitterness that I won’t be able to traverse those Keji roads once the snow flies, thanks to federal budget cuts. There will be no services and no access through the park's main entrance road , effectively turning Keji into a summer only recreation area. And yes, I've let my political representatives know exactly how I feel about that.)
I don't know of any place that rivals P.E.I. when it comes to non-paved vehicular transit.  If you want to move from Point A to Point B on the island, it's hard to avoid those wonderful red-dirt roads.
During a visit this summer, we put our GPS to use and found ourselves passing houses that, until the advent of this handy satellite technology, likely didn't see too much traffic going by.

the summer triangle of vega, deneb and altair straddles the milky way at kejimkujik national park. - john mcphee

Galactic highway
But back to that ghostly path that spans the October sky. There’s dust in the galactic road of the Milky Way, and there’s a lot of gas as well. Throw in the interaction of gamma rays and you get that eerie glow that gives our galaxy its name. 
Under “black” skies, the light of the Milky Way can be so luminous that it casts shadows, which must be a thoroughly surreal experience. But if you're observing any distance from city lights,  you’ll notice a path of darker areas that splits the bright starry path. Called the Great Rift, this ribbon of darkness is made up of dust created during the star formation process. 
Besides light pollution, moonlight is the bane of Milky Way pilgrims. It’s best viewed during the thin crescent and new moon phases. 
 It’s a great time of year to enjoy this celestial spectacle in the evening hours, when the Milky Way arcs overhead from Sagittarius low in the southeast and northwest to Cassiopeia. 

Roadside attractions
In late October, in or around Oct. 21, we have the added bonus of meteors streaking across the galactic vista during the peak of the Orionid shower. 
The Orionids usually don’t escalate into the meteor storms sometimes associated with showers such showers as the Leonid or Perseids.
But the average of 50 to 70 meteors per hour and the bearable night temperatures of late October is well worth putting off your bedtime. 
Time to rub our eyes, pack up the trunk and clean the dust off the windshield. Our road trip ends in the bleary hours of the October dawn, when the brilliant beacon of the winter star Sirius has crested the southern horizon.