On this dark, chilly October morning, the air was crystal clear and the night sky had the brilliance of mid winter. Bright Venus gleamed high in the east and a half moon glowed overhead. The Hunter, Orion, loomed in the southern sky with Sirius, our brightest star, to its southeast; just 8.7 light years away, Sirius is also among the closest of our celestial neighbors.
Northwest of Orion was the tight cluster of the Pleiades, commonly known as the Seven Sisters; 440 light years from Earth, they are among the youngest stars in the sky, having ignited during our Cretaceous Period (some 100 million years ago), when T. rex stalked the globe. Cassiopeia zig-zagged across the northwest sky and the Big Dipper, part of Ursa Major and perhaps our best-known constellation, tilted to its east.
Beautiful and humbling, the night sky, long misinterpreted by man, conveys our relative insignificance in this vast Universe. How many of those countless suns shine on other civilized planets, perhaps far more advanced than our own? In what constellations does our own sun appear, viewed from innumerable planets across our Milky Way Galaxy? Will we, as a species, ever learn of those civilizations or will the rapidly expanding Universe keep us forever in the dark? Haunting questions on this spectacular October morning.
