Games People Play

11/5/06 – 11/11/06
by C. Zaitz

I was out on a night hike last week with one of my classes. We did not use flashlights, but there was a half moon fading in and out of stratocumulus clouds. The focus of the evening was on screech owls, so the moon was just a big sky-flashlight. Unfortunately, the owls were not in the mood to return the melodic and persistent calls of our interpreter. We did hear the rumbles from the constant parade of planes flying into Metro Airport and the distant snarls of a raccoon squabble, but otherwise it was a pretty quiet and uneventful tramp.

So to amuse myself, I played a game which I call, “identify the star without any other reference but the moon.” Over the course of the walk, one or two stars at a time would shine through the clouds. My rules were that I had to figure out which star I was looking at out of the thousands of possibilities, with no constellation patterns to help, and no directions other than my knowledge of the time of night and the position of the moon.

Could you do it? Where would you start? I saw a bright star pretty high up in the sky. I thought of the brightest stars that are up after sunset in the autumn. There are less than a dozen, but they are scattered over the sky. I needed to know where I was looking, and though our path was constantly changing and twisting, I had a compass in the sky - the moon.

I saw half a moon in the sky. My first clue: half a moon seen in the early evening must mean a first quarter moon, waxing. I knew that its shiny side was facing the sun, and though the sun had already gone down, the moon was still pointing to it. I couldn’t see the glow from sunset due to the trees, but if I bisected the bright side of the moon, the line that I drew would point to the sun. Where that line met the horizon would be pretty close to west, since in the autumn the sun sets nearly due west. It’s not precise, but close enough for my game.

Once I knew that the bright star was high up in the west, I had arrived in the ballpark. I knew that my choices would be from the bright stars setting in the early evening, probably one from the Summer Triangle. Most likely Vega, the brightest of the three stars of the triangle. At this point it was a gut feeling, because it also might have been Deneb, but it just “felt” like Vega. Of course, when the clouds cleared enough for me to catch a glimpse of Deneb, I knew I was right. I sat under a cloud of smug for at least 30 seconds, until I went on to a different part of the sky. By the end of the tramp, the whole constellation of Pegasus was visible and so ended my game. Too easy!

Later I thought about how it might not have been such a game for people through history who were lost in the woods. I also remembered how eerie it can be in the dark with strange sounds and naught but the moon to illuminate your way. I was glad I had made friends with the sky a long time ago.

Until next week, my friends, enjoy the view.