It’s the spookiest time of the year! There are many ghosts, goblins and assorted other demons of the dark walking among us this week, but we’re getting an aerial assault of spooks as well.
Not only are we getting those unofficial reports of piloted brooms, but in the night sky there are many ghostly visions, especially if you’re under the darker skies of the countryside.
The best ghostly image in the heavens is without a doubt the Milky Way galaxy. This time of year it stretches in a band from the northeast horizon to nearly overhead, and then on to the southwest horizon.
We now know that the ghostly band of milky light we see is the combined light of the billions and billions of stars in our galaxy. Our sun and all the stars we see in our sky are part of a giant pinwheel of stars numbering more than half a trillion.
The spiral disk of our Milky Way galaxy is more than 100,000 light-years in diameter, but only about 10,000 light-years thick, although our galaxy’s center is much fatter than that. By the way, one light-year (the distance light travels in a year) equals almost 6 trillion miles. When we see that Milky Way band in our sky, we’re looking edgewise into the plane of our galaxy’s disk.
Back when people didn’t know about galactic structure, the Milky Way band took on a much more spiritual meaning. Different ancient cultures have various stories about that band, but many of them equate it with heaven and the life after our earthly existence.
The ancient Greeks considered the Milky Way band as the main street in “downtown” heaven, along which stood the palaces of the great gods. The common souls of heaven resided eternally in the suburbs away from the main drag of the hereafter.
My favorite Milky Way lore comes from some American Indian tribes. Some considered the band to be the collective light of the campfires of souls taking a break for the night on their way to the heavens.
Another ghostly image involves our Milky Way’s next-door neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. This ghostly image is a little more elusive, but if the sky is dark enough, you should be able to spot it in the southeastern sky. Look for a giant diamond of stars in the southeast that makes up the torso of the constellation Pegasus. Those four stars should be easy to find because they’re the brightest stars in that part of the sky.
You’ll also see a long arc of stars off the left-hand corner of the diamond, which outlines the wing of Pegasus. About halfway down the wing, look very carefully a little above the arc of stars. If you can’t see it with the naked eye, try scanning that area of the heavens with binoculars.
Admittedly, that ghostly patch of light you see won’t exactly blow you away, but keep in mind that you’re looking at the collective light of about a trillion stars about 21/2 million light-years away.
The best haunting in the night sky around Halloween is courtesy of the Pleiades star cluster, otherwise known as the Seven Sisters. Unlike the Andromeda galaxy, you should have no problem finding it, even if you’re stargazing from a more urban area. By 8:30 to 9 p.m. you can’t help but see a tight little cluster of stars that resembles a tiny Big Dipper. If your vision is sharp enough, you’ll see six to seven individual stars in that tight group of little shiners. Through binoculars you’ll see many, many more.
Astronomically, the Pleiades is a group of young stars about 410 light-years away that were born together out of a huge cloud of hydrogen gas. Before that was known, many ancient cultures feared the appearance of the Pleiades as an omen of possible catastrophes. It was thought that when the Pleiades reached its highest point in the sky about midnight, disaster could strike.
This high point of the Pleiades in the midnight hour occurs every year right around Halloween. Now, it didn’t mean there would be a calamity every Halloween at midnight, but if one were in the works, that’s about the time it would happen. May your Halloween be calamity-free!
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his Web site, www.lynchandthestars.com.
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