New Year’s Eve is upon us, and tonight it’s party time. A lot of folks may get a little lit up tonight, but the heavens will really get lit up. If you step out from the party or any other shenanigans you may be up to, you’ll see that the night is awash with all kinds of bright stars and constellations, especially in the southern half of the celestial dome.
That’s where Orion the Hunter and his gang of other brilliant stars and constellations are holding court. It’s my favorite set of constellations, centered around the mighty hunter that reminds me, and a lot of other people, of a giant hourglass. Orion’s most striking feature is his belt, made up of three bright stars in a near perfect row.
If you extend Orion’s belt with your mind’s eye to the lower left, you’ll run right into a seriously bright star. That’s Sirius, the brightest star in the entire night sky and the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, Orion’s loyal hunting dog. You won’t find any brighter star than Sirius in any part of the night sky or at any other time of the year. The reason it’s such a bright shiner is that it is one of the closer stars to us, at least relatively speaking. Sirius is about 8.5 light-years away, which works out to roughly 50 trillion miles. Believe it or not, that’s considered down the block, astronomically. Most stars you see up there, even with the naked eye, are much farther away, some hundreds, some even thousands of light years away.
Also, since Sirius is more than 8 light-years away, you’re not seeing it as it is right now, but you’re seeing what it looked like in 1998 when Bill Clinton was still president and gas was consistently less than $2 a gallon. It’s taken that long for the light from Sirius, a star more than twice as large as our sun, to reach our eyes on planet Earth.
Sirius is also known as the patron star of New Year’s because the brightest nighttime star rises to its highest point in the sky at the stroke of midnight, as you’re toasting the new year and smooching that special someone. Just about all of the stars in the sky arc across the sky, rising in the east and setting in the west. They reach their highest point in the sky above the southern horizon, crossing an imaginary line called the meridian. The meridian bisects the sky, running from the north compass point on the horizon to the south compass point on the horizon, passing right through the overhead zenith. At midnight tonight Sirius will be transiting the meridian at its highest point, 30 degrees above the southern horizon.
Now if it’s too cloudy tonight, or the party you’re at is swinging into 2007 a little too intensely for you to break away and catch some fresh air and the night skies, no worries. The entire first week of 2007 will have the brightest star in the night hanging at its highest in the midnight hour.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and author of the new book “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and on his Web site, www.lynchandthestars.com.
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