Sky & Telescope - December 2019 - 45

Under the Stars by Fred Schaaf

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: . . .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And thine own sadness, whereof stars, grown old
In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,
Sing in their high and lonely melody.
Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,
I ﬁnd under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way. . . .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.
-William Butler Yeats, excerpted from
To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time

Perpetual Motion
Everything in the universe is constantly on the move.

M A RTIN M A RK / CC BY-SA 4.0

any consider Yeats to be the greatest
English-language poet of the 20th
century. His work contains some notable
references to the stars. For instance, the
ﬁnal line of "Who Goes with Fergus?"
reads: "And all dishevelled wandering
stars." The planets have been called
"wandering stars," but I think that in
this line Yeats is referring to purely stellar objects. The line always makes me
think of the Coma Star Cluster in Coma
Berenices, for that irregular scattering
of naked-eye stars reminds me, as it did
the ancients, of the beautifully dishevelled hair of Queen Berenice. But Yeats
is probably describing the dishevelled
nature of the stars' twinkling, appropriate to the tone of the poem.
Now for the other potential astronomical references in the passages
excerpted above. The explicit mention
of stars dancing "silver-sandalled" on
the sea and singing a high and lonely
tune isn't the one that moves me the
most. For me, the line that stirs cosmic
thoughts - thoughts about the universe
- is the line about "eternal beauty."
Astronomical beauties wandering
on their way. I devoted much of the

September and October installments
of this column to the ancientness of
most astronomical objects. But the
central theme was eternity and what I
called the interface of now and forever. We always live on this interface
but very rarely become fully aware
of it. Yet we can do so, and revel in
the thrill of it, when we passionately
undertake astronomical observation.
Why? Because observing allows us to
compress into one evening's, even one
hour's, personal experience the millions
or billions of years of our targets' ages,
and the seconds or minutes to billions
of years that their light has traveled to
us across the cosmos.
There is, however, another aspect
of what we see in the heavens that can
increase our wonder and recognition
of beauty in the universe. I'm talking
about recognizing the glorious symphony of motion created by the movements of all the objects and collections
of objects out there.
A December night's symphony of
motion. On a calm and clear December
night, all may seem wonderfully silent
and still. But everything in the universe

is really in motion. We don't live in a
static cosmos. When we ﬁrst try our
hand at astronomical observing, we have
to learn how our rotating and orbiting Earth affects our perception of the
movements of celestial objects. Then we
can start appreciating the one-apparentMoon-width-per-hour eastward travel
of the Moon, and the slower, statelier
march of the planets in their orbits.
The mobility of the Moon and the
planets is mostly gauged against the
seemingly ﬁ xed background stars.
But even that background is in richly
complicated motion. At the time of
our December sky map, the Andromeda Galaxy is overhead - and heading
toward us in space. Aldebaran, in the
east, is heading rapidly away from us
in space. The Pleiades are ﬂying like a
ﬂock of doves to the southeast. Runaway stars in Auriga and Columba are
hurtling away from the central region
of Orion where their partner stars went
supernova millions of years ago, sending them ﬂying.
All of these ancient astronomical
objects - and we short-lived human
beings who nevertheless perceive the
universe - are all part of eternal beauty
wandering on her way.
¢ FRED SCHAAF welcomes your letters
and comments at fschaaf@aol.com.
sk yandtele scope.com * D EC E M B E R 2 019

http://www.skyandtelescope.com

Sky & Telescope - December 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - December 2019