Summer Vacations

7/1/07 – 7/7/07
By C. Zaitz

‘Tis the season to get away. Whether it is vacation travel time, visiting relatives time, or maybe just taking a vacation in your mind time, most folks like to change locations in the summer. I’m often asked about how the sky changes when you travel. The answer is: it depends on where you’re going! If you are traveling mostly due east or west, you don’t have to worry. You’ll see pretty much the same sky you will “here,” at pretty much the same time of the evening, give or take some minutes depending on how close you are to the edge of your time zone. For example, if you travel to Chicago from Detroit, you’ll notice a large difference in actual sunset time. Chicago is on the eastern edge of the Central zone, and we are on the western edge of the Eastern. We gain an hour by traveling to Chicago, so though physically the two cities aren’t that far apart, Detroit has sunset around 9pm EDT, and Chicago sees it at 8:15pm CDT.

If you’re traveling north or south of “here” (wherever you are), you’ll start to see some differences. From Michigan and pretty much anywhere in the US, the solar system objects make a path across the southern sky as they seem to travel east to west. The further south you go, the higher they will be in the sky. As you travel close to the equator, they will be above your head. As you go south of the equator, you’ll notice the parade of planets across the northern sky, but they’ll still be in the same order. Currently Venus is closest to the western horizon at sunset, followed by Saturn, with Jupiter bringing up the rear furthest toward the east. They will still seem to travel east to west, so the only difference is that you’ll be looking north, rather than south to see them.

The constellations do vary with latitude, but not that much within the US. If you travel north of here, you won’t add any new constellations to your repertoire; we see all the northern ones throughout the year already. If you go significantly south, perhaps beyond Miami, you will see sights never seen from our latitude. This is the realm of the hopelessly obscure constellations. If you thought Cancer (the crab) and Monoceros (the unicorn) were hard to find, try finding Antlia (the pump) or Norma (the carpenter’s square). I may be biased, but I think most of the groovy constellations are in the northern skies. That’s no excuse to stay home this summer, though!

I think the main difference you’ll find as you travel is the view of the sky in general. There aren’t too many places left that are unpolluted by street lights, but when you travel, chances are greater that you may find a few of them. I think that the mind actually sighs when it sees the vast number of stars of the Milky Way in a velvety black summer night sky. That’s when it begins to get rid of the hassles and worries of the long cold months and begins to finally get a change of perspective. And for me, that’s when the vacation really begins!

Until next week, my friends, enjoy the view.