Orion’s Belt
A couple nights ago, I decided to look out the window, at the stars,at 12 AM. To my surprise, I found that three of them were smudged!
I immediately thought “Galaxy!”, however the night time air had made me so tired. My mind struggled between sleep, and staying awake; Which very much frustrated me.
The second night, I realized that I was awake, at four in the morning. I could also see the “Star Smudge” (Galaxy in my mind) from my window.
I had talked to dad about the smudge the previous morning; All he said was that he didn’t know what to make of it.
At that point, I was set on getting the details. I scrounged around for a pen, and notepad, and drew out the constellation around it. It looked sort of like the Big Dipper, but with the cupped part missing, and in it’s place, the smudge. I was thinking about naming it “The molten Dipper” (At that time I had no clue it was Orion’s belt), due to the fact that the cup looked like it had melted, and was falling to the floor.
After that, I began to think about blogging about it, and making a photo shopped recreation of it. I ended up not, however I’d like to now…
It’s not nearly as apparent, but that gives you a sense of what I was seeing.
On the final night, something about the thought “Sleep” got me to sit straight up (Ironic…), and remember the “Galaxy”. I looked straight out the window, to find the sky FILLED with stars, thousands of them! (Imagine if the street lights had been out on that night!), and right in the center, more visible than ever before, was the “Galaxy”. However, I at that point thought it looked more like a comet..
The best thing was, it was only 11:30! My parents had started getting ready for bed only half an hour ago!
I struck at my chance, and asked dad to take a look. All he said was “it’s just the stars” – I immediately protested “That is not the halo of stars! No other stars have that around them!!”. Luckily, my mom had followed, and she had a go. I directed her eyes at the three stars at the top of the image, and had her look down to where the smudge was. “It’s a nebula.” she said! That thing had been bugging for three nights! (Possibly four, but I remember three…). I was relieved to know what it was!
She told me it was part of Orion’s Belt, and pointed my attention to a bright yellow star. I cannot remember if it is moving away, or towards us, but I remember reading from a Steven Hawkings book, that light waves bend in spectrum when the source is moving away/towards you. I think that red means it’s heading towards you, and yellow was away.
Someone from Star Trek should at that to their warp effects… (And not make the stars look like they are going that fast, and then when out of warp have them be that far way) (It took warp 3 to get to Jupiter, and yet they still had stars buzzing by at that speed as if you were going across the galaxy!)(Episode about a pre-warp five test.)
I just realized that I have devoted an entire paragraph to criticizing Star Trek…
I’ll get back on track… The skies at that time were beautiful, filled with stars. I’d never seen so many in my life, except once, at a camp – Shooting stars all over the place. I have always wondered how there could be so many [shooting stars] in that place, and so few here. But it just now hit me! We have street lights here, and those shooting stars are kind of faint. Also visible, straight up, was a HUGE circular nebula! It was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
December 11th, 2009 at 12:30 pm