In The Beginning....

I know. The title probably made you think this was going to be a historical review, starting with the Big Bang. It was supposed to be titled, At the Beginning..., though that seemed no less confusing. But here we are: at the beginning.

Most people, when they bother at all to look into the night sky, see a bewildering mess of white dots. Little do they suspect that not all of the dots are white. Some are blue, some are red, some are orange, some are gold. Looking at the night sky is like looking at an array of jewels on velvet.

Almost everybody knows the night sky has been mapped out into constellations. Little do they suspect that the one they already know contains the key to finding all the rest.

The one constellation that almost everyone knows is the Big Dipper. Almost everybody also knows that it points to the North Star, Polaris, ("poh-LAH-ris"), the Pole Star, toward which the North Pole of the Earth is pointed. This fact – that the Big Dipper points to something – is the the Ultimate Secret of Naked Astronomy.

Knowing this Secret, you're already stripped down to your underwear.

That's because Naked Astronomy is all about knowing that the constellations point to each other, and the Ultimate Secret is knowing which pointer to start with. Actually, there are two Great Pointer Constellations.

The other is Orion ("oh-RIGH-on"), which is usually the second constellation most people learn to recognize. Orion rules over the winter sky, rising late in the evening in the autumn, already high in the sky by dusk in March, but already set below the western horizon before dark falls in late spring. But he's a bold and bright set of stars and, as a centerpiece of the winter night sky, he's an excellent companion to go stargazing with on a long winter's night. More about Orion later.

We start with the Big Dipper because it's one of the circumpolar ("circum"=around; "polar"=the [north] pole) constellations, a handful of constellations which are visible every night the year. Now let's pry some more secrets out of the Big Dipper.

NEXT – Remember What the Dipper Said

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