Sky and Telescope - April 2016 - 45

OBSERVING

Northern Hemisphere's Sky

Fred Schaaf welcomes your
comments at fschaaf@aol.com.

Fred Schaaf

A Secret Flame
Find an individual hidden among the thousands.

In February's column, I discussed the desirability of
observing a thousand stars and how to do it in the winter
sky. This month, I look at the two sides - practical and
mystical - of such observations. The mystical calls for
us to see the stars as "a thousand secret ﬂames."
A thousand secret ﬂames. To imagine the stars as
ﬁre is a potent idea, even if the truth of it is that they're
nuclear ﬁres, producing energy by fusion. In the 19th
century, scientists calculated that even an object as massive as the Sun could only burn for a few thousand years
by any ordinary chemical reaction. The true nature of
stellar ﬁre was indeed a tremendous secret until the 20th
century, when Einstein unlocked it.
Cloaks, both natural and artiﬁcial, keep the ﬂames of
the stars a secret. The scattering of blue by our atmosphere by day conceals the stars. The big reveal at nightfall is astonishing - as demonstrated by Isaac Asimov's
story "Nightfall." That story illustrates Ralph Waldo
Emerson's quote, "If the stars should appear one night in
a thousand years, how would men believe and adore. . ."
But now the intermittent blankets of day, clouds, and
bright moonlight are superseded in much of our world
by the permanent covers of light pollution. It's up to
us who care about the stars and sky to keep ﬁghting to
educate the public about the many and serious negative
impacts of light pollution. If you aren't familiar with the
International Dark-Sky Association, check out the organization and its work on light pollution at darksky.org.
A thousand suns to study. Although it may sound
outrageous, I suggest that you try to observe a thousand
individual stars or star systems, regardless of whether
anyone has placed them on a list of visually pleasing
double stars, or variable stars, or very red stars. Of
course, the best place to start in sampling a thousand
suns is with stars that are bright enough to see with the
naked eye and therefore appear prominent, perhaps colorful, in the telescope. Record your observations of each
star. Ideally, you should also learn facts about every star,

to determine how each is an individual. And fortunately
someone has done much of this fact collecting for you -
retired professional astronomer Jim Kaler.
Kaler's website (http://is.gd/kalerstars) features
portraits of individual stars. He regularly adds to the
site and as of December 2015, the number of stars
proﬁled had reached 892. Coincidentally, the catalog of
the ancient Greek inventor of the magnitude system,
Hipparchus, includes about 850 stars. These numbers
approach 1,000, so you can see that it's possible to
observe and study that many. If, however, observing
1,000 individual stars sounds too challenging to you,
what should you do? Start with 100. You may ﬁnd achieving the ﬁrst 100 easier than you thought. And after that's
accomplished, you're on your way to a thousand.
See the secret suns. A star can be a "secret ﬂame"
if its characteristics are unknown to you. You can learn
the secrets of many a star before observing by consulting Kaler's site or other sources on your bookshelf or
the internet. But be sure you don't let that knowledge
remain un-visualized. If you do, it could easily wither
away into dryness or be forgotten. But you won't forget
the hidden realities of the stars once you've actually seen
the individual stars themselves, burning in the sky. ✦

AKIRA FUJII

And you would cause the sun to see your light
And then be shamed
You cover darkness with a thousand secret ﬂames
With your love, oh my love, oh my love, my love...
- Michael Dunford and Betty Thatcher,
The Young Prince and Princess

Sk yandTelescope.com April 2016

http://www.is.gd/kalerstars http://www.darksky.org http://www.SkyandTelescope.com

Sky and Telescope - April 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - April 2016