The Hunter ascendent

Canis Major and Orion are seen in the Annapolis valley. - John McPhee

Orion the Hunter has risen into view above the city skyline on a frosty late November night.

That’s no small feat given the light pollution that blights the sky above that cityscape. Even on the clearest and most transparent nights, all but the brightest stars are dimmed by the ever-expanding orange washout that comes with urbanization.

Luckily, the winter constellations such as Orion and Canis Major boast some of those stellar beacons.  

It’s particularly easy to track down the Hunter, mainly because of the diagonal trio of stars that make up his belt. (The photo above shows a dark sky view with Orion at upper right and Canis Major to the left). 

Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka (from bottom up) appear to line up neatly to hold up the Hunter’s pants. In fact, these stars are dozens and hundreds of light-years away from each other in space.

If you look above Orion in December's evening skies, two bright stars might catch your eye, one red and the other blazing yellow.

Let's begin with the brighter of the pair, the yellow star Capella. This is the brightest star nearest the northern celestial pole, so it's visible every night at some time in our latitude. Capella, the fifth-brightest star in the northern night sky, is quite similar to the sun, except for its huge size. It's the alpha star of the constellation Auriga (oh-RYE-guh), which contains some interesting sights for binocular and telescope observers.

Its main attractions are three open star clusters, M36, M37 and M38. It's rare to have so many bright clusters in one constellation, especially in the relatively sparse winter skies.

In summer, the Milky Way, particularly around Sagittarius, fairly bursts with open and globular clusters.

You don't have to look far from Auriga to find more clusters high in the December sky. That red star I mentioned would be Aldebaran (al-DEB-uh-ran), a supergiant that marks the spot for the huge open cluster, the Hyades (HY-uh-deez). Aldebaran is not actually part of the V-shaped cluster; it lies only 68 light-years from Earth, while the cluster is 150 light-years away.

The Hyades contains about 200 stars and it's a spectacular sight in binoculars, covering too much of the sky to be easily viewed in a telescope.

Comet 46pwirtanen (the green dot) is seen below the pleiades cluster on feb. 4, 2019. - john mcphee

Another must-see for binocular observers is M45, also known as the Pleiades (PLEE-uh-deez). There's nothing else like it in northern skies. This open cluster is small enough to present a stunning sight when using low-power views in a telescope. But it's big enough to be easily visible to the naked eye; it's claimed that people with excellent eyesight can see six or even seven of the cluster's brightest stars. No problem seeing those stars with binoculars - the cluster fits easily in most binocular fields. Your neck will probably give out before you want to move on from this celestial jewel box.

You can put away your binoculars and still enjoy another highlight of the winter sky.  The constellation Perseus (PURR-see-us) rewards you with a glittering ladder of stars that climbs toward the zenith in mid-evening. Look just to the east of M45 to find this much larger celestial group. 

You can give your neck a rest and look low in the east to find the brightest planet in the evening sky this month, Jupiter. This largest of the planets (and second brightest after Venus) rises after 10:30 p.m. in November.

If you’re up with the birds, you’ll see the ringed planet  Saturn (but you’ll need a small telescope to see those rings). It rises just before the sun in the southeast in November and later as the winter really takes hold. 

Springing into the night sky

I'm dreaming of the mountains, where the children learn the stars.

Rexroth's Daughter, Greg Brown

The planet mars - at left - rises with the Milky Way in PEI. - John McPhee

IN THIS light-polluted, screen-obsessed time, learning the stars probably doesn't rank high on many to-do lists. That's too bad. It's really not that difficult to develop at least a passing acquaintance with the universe around us.

And it's free, at least before you get hooked enough to start buying equipment. Once you get a feel for the patterns and motions of the stars, you get a new appreciation for how our planet fits into the scheme of things.

There's a lot of talk about reality this and reality that, these days. Well, turn off the TV, step outside on a clear night and there's a beautiful reality for you. It's home. We're hitching a ride on a hunk of rock circling a huge nuclear furnace, our sun, which is a pretty ordinary star among the 400 billion or so that make up our Milky Way galaxy alone.

This is a good time of year for getting to know our cosmic neighbourhood - at some point, surely, we'll enjoy real spring temperatures, before the invasion of the insect world has yet to begin.

Celestial guidebooks

Before you venture out under the stars, make sure you spend some time indoors with some good guidebooks. I have sung the praises of Nightwatch (Firefly Books) before in this space, and I may as well repeat the chorus. Canadian astronomer Terence Dickinson offers an appealing, informative source of information for the beginning and intermediate stargazer.

A couple of other Firefly publications may help as well. These are lower-cost alternatives to larger format tomes such as Nightwatch. Practical astronomy: A Beginner's Guide to the Night Sky, by Storm Dunlop, covers the whole gamut of amateur astronomy, while the title of the Moon Observer's Guide, by Peter Grego, explains its purpose.

Both publications have their good points, which I'll get to, but let's get the quibbles over with first. With any guidebook, I want to know the background and expertise of the author. Strangely, the books offer no information at all about Dunlop or Grego. Both are based in Britain, and a Google search revealed they are prolific writers and members of the astronomical community.

Dunlop's book calls itself a beginner's guide but doesn't pitch itself to the younger reader, and that's probably a smart move.

Only young adults and older readers who have a serious interest in the hobby would likely get through this book: Dunlop offers a lot of information here.

But it's almost too much of a good thing. This compact volume is stuffed with graphics, sidebars and illustrations. There are no obvious divisions of content, so everything tends to run together.

But if you are intent on absorbing as much as possible about this hobby, this is a reasonably priced, valuable volume. I particularly like Practical Astronomy's mini-tables of contents that direct the reader to pages within a section that refer to more specific observing topics.

I'm also impressed with the Moon Observer's Guide. Like many such volumes, it's organized by lunar days - that is, the first day after new moon, Day 2 and so on. Each section includes a map of that particular slice of moon, accompanied by descriptions of the craters, "seas" and other lunar sights to be seen during that phase.

Grego also gives tips on instruments best suited for observing the moon, as well as pointers on photography, videography and drawing your observations. The final chapters offer a glossary of terms and information on eclipses and exploration programs such as Apollo.

Star trails are seen in this stack of long exposures of the Milky Way. - John McPhee

Under the dome

If you've yet to delve into the bookstore, buy a magazine such as Sky and Telescope or Astronomy Magazine. These magazines have simple star charts so you can begin orienting yourself under the celestial bowl. (Sadly the Canadian astronomy magazine Sky News recently shut down, one of many publications that have been hammered by plummeting advertising revenues).

Hold the star chart at about chest level and face south. Turn the chart so that south is at bottom - this way the chart accurately reflects the orientation of the stars when you look up.

As I've mentioned before, star charts can be tricky and take a bit of mental gymnastics. For example, the southern horizon as represented on our chart may look like it should be behind you, when that direction is oriented at bottom. But remember that's the direction you're facing - the sky is like an inverted bowl, so the usual terrestrial map orientations don't work.

So give it a try on the next clear night. Look south. If you have a clear view of the horizon, you will see the star Spica (SPIKE-uh). As your chart should indicate, this star is in the faint constellation Virgo. Spica stands out, because it's one of our brightest stars and it's located in a sparse section of sky.

Look higher in the sky and to the left for another bright star, Arcturus (arc-TOUR-us), in the kite-shaped constellation Bootes (buh-OH-teez), the Herdsman. 

The most recent maps also should include the planets, at least the ones visible at about 10 p.m. You'll have plenty of opportunity to spot a planet this summer.

Let's start with the ringed jewel of the solar system, Saturn, which will put on a great show this summer as it climbs higher in the sky.  Go back to Spica in the south.  Look below it and to the left for Saturn, a pale yellowish orb that is slightly brighter than the blue Spica. 

Turn your gaze above and slightly right of Spica to find a closer solar system neighbour, Mars. The Red Planet, which has more of a subdued rusty hue to the naked eye, is making one of its closer approaches to Earth. 

Now turn around and face the west. You’ll find Jupiter, the largest planet, closing out its winter apparition in the west. Later this month in the west after sunset, tiny Mercury (it's only slightly larger than our moon) will put on a good show.  This sun-hugging planet is always relatively low in the west at dusk or in the east at dawn. But this time around it will climb high enough for a good view, particularly on May 30-31 when a very thin crescent moon will appear to the left of this little rocky world. 

Solitary

Alone under the stars at kejimkujik National park in NOva scotia. - john mcphee

It’s late October and evening is falling on the woods of Kejimkujik National Park.

A pot of water bubbles away on my campfire. In a few minutes, I’ll dump the contents of my Harvest Works pasta primavera into the pot and wait the prescribed 10 to 12 minutes for my dinner to rehydrate.

The stars have begun to materialize above the canopy of hemlock and birch. There’s good old Vega, the bluish-white beacon of the summer and fall night sky, high in the west.  The stars are welcome company as the light drains from the sky. It can be an unsettling feeling when you’re alone among the deepening shadows of the backcountry.

I came out here seeking solitude and I’ve got it in spades. The nearest campsite on land (as opposed to the lake island sites)  is about 10 kilometres away. And anyway, there aren’t many other campers around as far as I can tell.  It’s midweek in the off-season, after all.

I spend a couple of days at a backcountry site once or twice a year. It’s a ritual that my spouse at once admires and dreads. She worries that I’ll chop my hand off cutting wood or fall into a lake. She knows me well - these are not unreasonable fears.

Keji backcountry

There are many backcountry camping sites at Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia, where dark skies provide amazing celestrial views.

- Map created by Friends of Keji Co-operative

 And while I’m certainly in shape, I’m not going to register for a marathon anytime soon. But I can handle a loaded backpack for the six kilometres it takes to reach Yurt 1 near Peskowesk Lake. The yurt, a hexagonal metal frame covered in thick canvas, provides a little more peace of mind than my 1980s-era tent.

I always have a cellphone in my shirt pocket and a whistle around my neck. Cellphone reception can be dodgy in the park but you can usually pull in a bar or two on the 3G register. The whistle is recommended in place of wearing out your throat yelling for help in the event of trouble. I usually envision using it in a confrontation with a snarling black bear or coyote. (As if an annoying shrill noise would deter an animal intent on having me for dinner.)

campsite 28 at keji. the yurt described in the story is no more but the site is still available for camping. - john mcphee

Such are the thoughts that pass through a nervous mind in the darkness. Balancing out the primal fears in my monkey brain is the joy of silence. Halifax is a small city, hardly a bustling metropolis.  But a brief escape from the noise, concrete and humanity is good for my psyche.

I lack the filter that handles external stimuli most folks appear to possess. I have a hard time focusing on one conversation in a crowded room. And loud noises - well, let’s just say I always avoid walking near the Citadel at noon.

So while the silence and solitude may be a bit spooky I always appreciate my Keji retreats.

Meanwhile my pasta is taking on a vaguely familiar form in the pot. The stars are lovely. And I’ve got Eleanor Wachtel for company on my iPhone.

Time for dinner in the woods.

Finding stillness

Keeping still isn't easy out here in the world.  

Just try it. If you stand still long enough in public, even in a park like this in the middle of the city, odds are you'll get a visit from the local security forces.

"What are you doing, sir?"

"Just keeping still, officer."

Likely that won't be a satisfactory answer and more questions, at the least, will follow. But today, as is the case on most days, there's a camera in my hands. It's like a magic talisman that keeps questions at bay.

"What are you doing, sir?

"Taking photos of birds, officer."

"Oh. OK."

So it's acceptable to just to stand here in the relative silence of this less-trodden part of Point Pleasant Park and .... wait.

What I'm waiting for is a common yellowthroat, a visually striking little warbler that resembles a masked bandit with its band of black around the eyes. I heard its distinct  'witchety-witchety" call as I walked by and I may have spotted him flickering through the bushes.

I keep still, camera on and with the proper bird-friendly settings. I study the small slice of the wooded world in front of me and open myself up to it, alert to any movement or sound in the shadowy underbrush. After a bit, I realize I'm enjoying the moment just as much as I might enjoy getting a shot of the yellowthroat.

Many years after I wrote this column, I finally got a decent shot of a common yellowthroat. - John McPhee

Too often, even in the real woods, not the reasonable facsimile of the urban park, I see a bird or snake or deer, and the urge to record and crystallize the moment overtakes the moment itself. I want the photo NOW. 

It's not a natural skill for me, keeping still. I'm the guy whose legs are jittery and bouncy beneath the desk at the office. I'm impatient for that red to change to green, dammit, I've got places to be, not here at the traffic lights where we supposedly spend an average six months of our lives. 

So I've learned to appreciate the times like these when I will myself to become part of the scenery and simply stop.

No yellowthroat. Too bad. The only shot of one I've taken is pretty weak.

So the only documentation will be these words and the memory of stillness on a summer day. That will do. 

Welcome back

The song sparrows have returned to Point Pleasant Park. ​This guy was quite co-operative as I snapped shots from about three metres away on April 4, 2013. This isn't unusual - I've found they are content to let you linger close by as they belt out their mating message. He had lots of competition that day as he traded melodies with at least two other males in the vicinity.

 It always lifts the heart to hear the song sparrow's melodic serenade for the first time in the spring. These chubby, dishevelled-looking passerines often return to their northern breeding grounds when there is still snow on the ground, as early as mid-March. 

A few hardier specimens spend the winter in Nova Scotia, as well as Ontario and other parts of southern Canada. But most escape the cold in the southern United States. They can be found as far north as the Aleutian Islands in breeding season. ​

Identification please

The wood chips are flying on a blustery early spring day in Point Pleasant Park.

No the park crews aren't taking down trees in this precious green space in south-end Halifax. The workers are, in fact, hard at it widening drainage ditches along the park roads in preparation for the spring rains.

The only woodworker in sight is of the avian kind. A hairy woodpecker is earning his lunch of insects and other delicacies on a tree trunk in the southern-most tip of the park near the shore. I've watched a lot of woodpeckers at their task over the years and every time, their tenacity and resilience amazes me.

Look close for the darting tongue of this pileated woodpecker on the hunt for a tasty insect in the bark. - john mcphee

Most woodpeckers aren't hardy looking types - the glaring exception being the outrageous pileated woodpecker (above). But what they lack in size and muscle, they more than make up for it in work ethic. This hairy is is aware of me and I'm creeping up pretty close camera in hand, but he continues to hammer away at the bark.

When I posted my shots of this guy on the Nova Scotia Bird Society's Facebook page, I called it a downy woodpecker. BUZZZZZZ. Wrong answer. I was quickly made aware of the error of my ways (most politely) by one of the many experienced birders. The hairy and downy are very similar in plumage with their black and white bodies and red caps. But the hairy is a bit heftier and has a longer beak, which I did know but missed with this specimen.

What's in a name?

Despite the daily and disturbing loss of species - whether naturally occurring or as a result of human activity - the variety of different animals and plants in the natural world is mind-boggling.   And I'd really enjoy being able to quickly ascertain the type and genus of everything I come upon.

But to call me less than visually perceptive would be giving myself credit. Some people can quickly make the connection in their head with plumage patterns, colour and body shape and voila, "That's a northern three-toed woodpecker, not a black-backed woodpecker." I'd be still fumbling through my Petersen guide long after many birders had identified and moved on.

the bark chips fly as this hairy woodpecker looks for lunch in a maple tree at point pleasant park. - john mcphee

 My auditory memory is more reliable. Perhaps because I've got decent musical pitch, I can pin down a bird song fairly quickly, even if it's distant and I only hear it once. But unfortunately most things in nature don't sing - so the tree that hairy woodpecker was exploring was also a mystery to me when I started writing and wanted to add that detail.

Now that's more a matter of being more excited about the bird (or insect or whatever)  and not taking the time to note the context, which is just as important. If I'd stopped, taken a good look at the tree and took some notes and detailed photos, likely I could have pinned it down.

Alas, I had to turn once again to my online support community and as usual, I was impressed by the depth of knowledge among nature lovers in Nova Scotia. Just from a Google map photo, a bird society member was able to talk in detail about the possibilities.

He did immediately identify the general species, which I truly wish was some obscure park variety. Sigh. A maple. Yes, one that has been extensively pruned and the leaves were in curling winter mode but still, a maple! Either sugar or red. 

Now Googling "how to improve your visual observation skills in 10 easy steps"....

Just ducky

“Tufted duck! Tufted duck!”

The urgent call rings out just as our group had crossed a busy road in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia, planning to warm up with a cuppa at a nearby Tim Horton’s.

We draw some curious looks from the occupants of passing cars, outfitted as we are with binoculars, cameras and spotting scopes.

We dutifully make our way carefully back to the cove shoreline and start scanning  for the unusual specimen. The tufted duck is usually found only  in Europe and Asia but it’s been spotted more frequently in North America (according to my Roger Tory Petersen guide.)

The defining characteristic of this small black and white diving duck is a tuft of feathers that curves downward from its head.

The observer who identified the duck and called us back, Clarence Stevens Jr., tries to narrow down its location among the mass of birds offshore to the rest of the group. An expert birder, he’s the author of the Birding in Metro Halifax.

As for me, I wouldn’t know a tufted duck if it waddled up and introduced itself.  But I try to track it down in my 10 by 50 binoculars and yes, maybe that one has the tell-tale crest. Hmm, then again maybe not....

a pair of american black ducks whiz by hartlen point, nova scotia. - john mcphee

Sewer strolling

I’m taking part in what the Nova Scotia Bird Society calls a “sewer stroll” on a blustery winter day. No, we’re not getting a tour of the municipal sanitation system. The facetious name refers to the fact winter ducks, gulls and alcids (duck-like birds such as razorbills) often congregate near sewer outflows to grab some dinner.

Sewage, it turns out, is quite the delicacy for fish. And they must come close to the surface to nibble away, making them easy pickings for the water birds.

By the end of the morning, we had spotted many of the duck species that frequent Halifax Harbour, including red-breasted mergansers (with their signature punk hairstyle), common eiders, bufflehead, goldeneye and of course, the ubiquitous mallard.

Besides the tufted duck, some of the more unusual finds were dovekies, a cute little diving bird in the alcid family, snow geese, one very rare Ross’s goose and Eurasian wigeon at Sullivan’s Pond

The expedition included several sightings of unusual land birds, such as a lovely northern mockingbird (below) on a lane in Eastern Passage.

A northern mockingbird perches in a backyard in eastern passage, nova scotia. - john mcphee

Just ducky

But it was the incredible variety of sea birds that stuck in my mind after the trip. My exploration of the birding universe has mostly involved land birds, particularly the many varieties of warblers that grace our province from spring to fall.

You can get up close and personal with a warbler, if you’re lucky. Not so with sea birds and maybe that’s part of the attraction - they have an aura of mystery as they live out their lives in the watery offshore world.

That also creates some frustration, obviously, for the folks trying to observe them. But when they venture close enough to shore, ducks make much more co-operative photographic subjects than the flitting behaviour of perching birds on land.

Photography has become a big part of my ventures into the natural world, whether it’s the daytime exploration of the bird world or observing the equally varied sights of the nighttime sky.

When it comes to water bird photography, two words sum up the first priority: big lens. Even when sea birds are helpful enough to come closer to shore, you’ll need magnification to capture any kind of detail.

While today’s image stabilized lenses make it much easier to get a decent hand-held shot, the other crucial tool of the bird photographer is a tripod. I’ve found that images taken on a mounted camera, particularly using a “live view” screen for focusing, are much sharper.

My tripod does the job but I’ve found that my 250mm lens doesn’t quite cut it.  So it’s into the bank account I go for a longer lens, something in the 400mm range.

As if my geek factor wasn’t already apparent, I’ll remove all doubt by saying I’m really excited at the prospect of filling the frame with one bird.

Now to find a map of the local sewers....

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.

Lost among the galaxies

OK, I’M TRYING not to panic but I’m definitely lost.

I’m supposed to be at the spiral galaxy M98, but this really looks more like M87. Or maybe it’s M99.

Don’t you hate it when you’re 50 million light-years from home and you get off at the wrong stop?

When you’re exploring the Virgo galaxy cluster, it’s easy to lose your way. This is my first journey into an incredible conglomeration of galaxies with a larger scope, which can bring out the “faint fuzzies,” each of which represents billions upon billions of stars. Check out the left-centre area near the blue star 6-Coma. Anything that has a horizontal shape or looks like a greyish out of focus star is likely a galaxy.

You can track down the brightest galaxies with good binoculars but in a good-sized telescope (an eight- to 12-inch Dobsonian or Schmidt-Cassegrain), you can tease out hints of structure such as the arms of spiral galaxies, which look so spectacular in long-exposure pho­tographs.

The leo-virgo region contains dozens, up to hundreds, of galaxies visible in a telescope, depending on its size. The brightest galaxies can be found around the star 6-coma. The bright star to the right is denebola in leo. - john mcphee

This huge Virgo cluster of about 2,000 galaxies lies about 50 to 90 mil­lion light-years away. How many you can actually see in a telescope de­pends on light pollution — galaxy hunting requires dark skies away from city lights — and your scope.

For example, in my Dobsonian reflector, which has an eight-inch mirror, I should be able to nab over 20 members of the cluster. That number zooms up to more than 100 if you have a telescope of at least 12 inches.

Once you start exploring the clus­ter, you’ll notice most of the galaxies appear as oval blobs of light, like faint comets. These are called elliptical galaxies, which are the most numer­ous and brightest type in the Virgo region. They’re not as interesting visually as spiral galaxies, which boast starry arms curling out from a bright core, but ellipticals are far from boring.

A bright elliptical, M87, lies at the heart of the Virgo cluster, to the west of the star Denebola that marks the tail of Leo, the Lion.  It’s an unimaginably huge city of stars — M87’s mass has been estimated in the range of several trillion times that of our sun. Even at 80 million light-years away, it’s visible in large binoculars and certainly small telescopes.

Besides sheer size and luminosity, M87 is known for the incredible jet of subatomic energy streaming out from the galaxy. The jet originates from a disc of superheated gas around a massive black hole at M87’s centre.

The inserted close-ups show mini-clusters of galaxies in the virgo-Leo region. On the right, the eyes in the “face” are made up of m86 and M84, the nose is the elliptical galaxy NGC4387 and the mouth is the spiral galaxy NGC4388. On the left, the insert shows galaxies around the blue star 6-coma including the spiral M98 . - john mcphee

I’ve found the book Astronomy: The De­finitive Guide very helpful as I make tentative steps into this incredible realm of star cities. The book's “galaxy-hop­ping” chart for the Virgo and Coma clusters is clear and simple, but provides enough detail to make it easier to figure out which fuzzy is which in your eyepiece.

For those who just want a quick look at something beautiful, the most modest binoculars will reveal a rich spattering of stars that make up the dim, tiny constellation Coma Berenic­es. It can be found between Denebola and the bright star Arcturus.

Leo lies on the ecliptic, the path followed by the sun, moon and planets. The outer planets such Saturn and Jupiter are regular visitors to the Lion's den.

Saturn, with its magnificent ring system, is familiar even to those who haven’t actually looked at it through a telescope.

But you really haven’t seen Saturn until you’ve done just that.

There’s a surreal quality to the sight of this strange object floating in your field of view that can’t be duplicated in photos.

As for those famous rings, they can either be really prominent or almost invisible, depending on how the planet is tilted from our perspective on Earth. If you’re observing with a telescope, try to find the tiny speck of Saturn’s brightest moon, Titan, and the many dimmer moons closer to the planet.

Escaping the light

THERE'S no doubt, the farther you are from the city lights, the better your stargazing will be. Light pollution robs us of the subtle beauties to be found in the night sky, whether it's the ribbon of stars and glowing gases of the Milky Way or the faint constellations of spring.

For instance, if you're in the city, you'd be hard-pressed to pick out groups like Virgo, low in the east, or Hydra's sprawling ladder of stars that now stretches from the southeast to the high southwest.

There are plenty of places in my province, Nova Scotia, where you can find dark skies. In fact, some of them rank among the best in Canada. But there's good news for urban observers: light pollution doesn't affect planet observation. The sun does a great job of lighting up these objects for our enjoyment and even small details in planets' atmospheres and surfaces make it through the glare.

Of course, sometimes nearby lights that shine directly into your eyes can make even planet watching difficult. In that case, you have to do some creative positioning to use trees or structures to block these offending photons.

even distinctive constellations like ursa major can be hard to find in light-polluted skies. In dark sky preserves like kejimkujik national park, it’s a cinch to scoop up the big dipper. - john mcphee

I usually drape an old blanket over deck rails or a high deck chair and sit on a lower chair in my attempts to shut out neighbours' porch lights or street illumination.

The most interesting planets to observe in a telescope, I think most observers would agree, would be Saturn and Jupiter.

While you need a telescope to enjoy Saturn's rings and surface features, a good pair of binoculars are enough to keep you coming back to Jupiter night after night. That's because its four brightest moons - Ganymede, Io, Callisto and Europa - are easily visible with just 10x power, although as tiny specks. You can detect changes in their positions over a matter of hours as they orbit around Jupiter.

This moon dance is obvious when you take another look on the following night - the lineup will likely be quite different.

If you're more ambitious and have your eye on objects a lot farther down the cosmic road than our solar system, such as galaxies, you must flee the light and seek out a nice dark spot in the country.

In Nova Scotia, it doesn't take too much of a drive to escape light blight,  even if you live in Halifax or Sydney. But you should get at least an hour's drive away from the city, since it doesn't take much sky glow to wash away detail in deep-sky objects.

Some of the province's dark sky areas are described on cleardarksky.com, a website that mainly focuses on weather and sky conditions for amateur astronomers. I say some because the website gets its light pollution information from the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, which oddly enough doesn't include Cape Breton and other parts of the province.

However, cleardarksky does indicate that areas such as Kejimkujik Natinoal Park in Queens County and the Argyle area near Yarmouth are little affected by light pollution. The Milky Way, the central region of our galaxy best visible in the summer, is so bright in these areas that it can cast shadows.

find a dark sky and point a telescope toward the coma berenices region of the night sky. You’ll find dozens of smudges of light, which are galaxies that contain billions of stars. - john mcphee

If you look at the entire light pollution map of North America, it's clear that this kind of observing is to be treasured.

While the Liscombe Game Sanctuary area on the Eastern Shore is one of those areas left out of the light pollution grading, it's well known among local amateur astronomers as an excellent dark-sky site.

As for Cape Breton, the skies over the East Bay and Bras d'Or area first tweaked my interest in stargazing, way back when. I can remember being more interested in the satellites and airplanes zooming across the sky, but I was also captivated by the glittering blanket of stars over the island hills. 

If you do find yourself a dark, safe place, and you have even a small telescope, you can observe many galaxies in April and May. Hundreds of galaxies are visible with a larger telescope in the Leo-Virgo region.

Two of the brightest in April, M65 and M66, can be found in the isosceles group that makes up the Lion's hindquarters. Find the star at the right bottom corner of the triangle, and look slightly below and to the left for M65 and M66. These two are so close together that they both fit into the viewing field of a small telescope.

It's worth escaping the city lights to marvel at these star cities so many light-years away. ​

Starry, starry night

Starry, starry night, 

Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,

Swirling clouds in violet haze,

Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) - Don McLean

THE SUBJECT of the painting that inspired this pretty song can be seen in the east in our October skies.

But you may have to look hard for tiny Aries, the constellation that is seen with the crescent moon and Venus in Vincent van Gogh's painting Starry Night.

The Ram's three brightest stars are not that bright - they are arranged in a "broken stick" pattern that would easily escape the eye if the group weren't located in a barren patch of sky.

Van Gogh painted Starry Night in June 1889 at the Saint-Remy asylum, where he had himself committed after the famous breakdown that saw him cut off part of his left ear.

There's a fascinating side-by-side comparison of the painting and the constellation at http://www.vggallery.com/forum/forum_18a.htm.

It's not known why van Gogh chose this obscure constellation for his subject, although the online van Gogh gallery notes that Aries was the painter's astrological sign.

The constellation aries. - john mcphee

Turn a pair of binoculars or a telescope on Aries and the constellation becomes much more interesting. It's small enough that the three brightest stars will fit into the field of a 7 x 35 pair.

There are pleasing sprinklings of fainter stars surrounding the trio, particularly near the easternmost star, which forms a neat little triangle with two fainter stars in binoculars. If you like doubles, aim your telescope just below the westernmost star, the dimmest of the three, and you'll be rewarded with a tight pair of very similar stars.

If city lights make it difficult to find Aries, you'll likely have to seek darker skies to find the other inconspicuous trio in this region, Triangulum. Like Aries, this group will fit into view through wide-field binoculars.

When you try to pick out fainter constellations like these, you're putting a lot of things to the test, such as figuring out the faintest stars you can see in your area (the fancy term being limiting magnitude) and also how 'good' the atmosphere is that night (astronomers call this seeing). It also demonstrates how our eyes adapt to the dark.

The international space station moves through the constellation andromeda. - john mcphee

For instance, on a September night way back when during a break at work, I was  three storeys above the street lights of downtown Halifax. It was a steady, clear night with low humidity - great conditions for stargazing. At first, I could see only the brightest star in Aries, nothing of Triangulum. But 10 minutes later, I could easily see the two brighter stars in Aries, with more difficulty its dimmest star, and all of Triangulum.

When I'm in the country, no dark adaptation is needed on this kind of night. Even faint constellations pop into view away from the scourge of light pollution.

Another thing about spotting fainter constellations - wait until they become higher in the sky, away from horizon glow and the air currents of the lower atmosphere. Spare your neck and do your high-sky gazing in a lounge chair with a blanket and maybe a warmed-up Magic Bag on these cooler nights.

The other faint constellations this month, Andromeda and Pegasus, couldn't be more different than the diminutive Aries and Triangulum. From Andromeda in the northeast to the western-stretching wings of the horse Pegasus, they take up a huge part of the sky.

The big square that makes up the body of the Pegasus starts to push the Summer Triangle off centre stage at the zenith in October. As geometrical contests go, there's none between the blazing trio of the triangle and the shy foursome that make up the Great Square.

- @ Simulation curriculum Corp

But there are treasures hiding in that unassuming eastern sky.

Look above the middle star of the three that stretch out from the Square to find the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31. (Astrophotographer extraordinaire Blair MacDonald of Halifax made this amazing shot).  I can make out M31 in darker suburban skies with the naked eye, and on very good nights, I can spot this patch of fuzzy light in binoculars from Halifax.

It's a wonder to behold in my telescope at home - although if somebody new to astronomy looked in the eyepiece they might wonder what the fuss is about. Well, the thing is, the light from this fuzzy glow first started its journey toward our eyes two million years ago. Andromeda, somewhat bigger but quite similar to our own spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, is the most distant object we can see with the naked eye.

Northern exposure

The big dipper shines through moonlight on a july evening in brackley, PEI. - john mcphee

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness; close bosom–friend of the maturing sun. – John Keats, Ode to Autumn

HERE IN THIS season of changes, the night sky comes upon us ever more quickly and the days of bare–headed stargazing are fading fast.

The transitory nature of things has come close to home this autumn.

An old friend – a burly, blue– and yellow–eyed guy named Phoenix – has departed for the great catnip patch in the sky. Whenever my heart needs some warming up, I'll think of him dozing in a comfy patch of light from his favourite star, head nestled between his big white paws.

And a recent move has changed my astronomical ways. On the bright side (or dark, as it happens), we're temporarily even deeper in the sticks than our previous abode. While our new digs are being built, I'll enjoy probably the least light–polluted skies I've ever had.

The back deck now faces north – not usually a direction coveted by stargazers.

The northern horizon is on the opposite side of the sky from the richer parts of the Milky Way. Besides that, not much changes in this region. Many of the constellations are circumpolar, a fancy way of saying they never completely set.

The six circumpolar constellations slowly wheel around the North Star, Polaris, in a counter–clockwise motion throughout the year.

For example, probably the most famous star group, the Big Dipper, is now very low in the 7 o'clock position, and by next month will be striking about 6 o'clock.

The Big Dipper is part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The outside stars of the Big Dipper's bowl point up to Polaris, at the end of the Little Dipper's handle in Ursa Minor.

Keep tracing this imaginary line past Polaris and you'll come to the peak of the house–shaped constellation Cepheus (SEE–fee–us), the King.

If you've found Cepheus, your eye should certainly catch the brighter W–shape of Cassiopeia (kas–ee–oh–PEE–uh), right next door.

Probably the least known member of the circumpolar club is a real mouthful: Camelopardalis (kam–uh–low–PAR–da–lis), the Giraffe.

This is one tough beast to track down.

When I first got into this hobby, I thought I'd found the Giraffe with no problem. I looked up in the northeastern winter sky, saw a curving line of stars that seemed to form a long neck, with two stellar "legs" on either side. Hello, Camelopardalis.

Not so much. I was actually looking at Perseus, the mythological hero equipped with sword and shield.

This glittering constellation is now low in the northeast just after dark.

You can use Perseus to find the real giraffe. Camelopardalis is just to the left of Perseus, a much dimmer version of its wishbone shape.

Another elusive circumpolar beast, the faint and sprawling Draco (DRAY–ko) the Dragon, weaves its tail around the Little Dipper and arches up toward Cepheus. The Dragon's head lies farther west, perilously close to Hercules, the strongman demi–god who killed Draco.