Starry, starry night

I'm writing at 1am in the morning, having just spent an hour reading the sky and smoking cigars. It's about as balmy as it gets in northern Scotland in September, certainly comfortable enough to be outdoors at midnight without risking your extremities to hypothermia. And tonight the stars were brilliant. St Hackett's parish is far enough out in the sticks to miss the worst of the city's sleepless glow, and for once the veil of grey clouds had parted long enough to reveal the night sky in all its glory.

I remembered other nights like this. Lying on my back at the fringes of a student beach party somewhere in the South of England, years ago. A special memory because we lay there for hours watching shooting stars, dozens of them, tear their way across the sky. Every now and again we'd spot something consistent and slower moving: a satellite traversing the heavens with purposeful precision. To my shame, at the age of 21, it was the first time I'd ever seen those things, or at least noticed them.

I remembered too walking back home with Rosie late one night while on holiday in the Hebrides; breathing in the pure sea air and avoiding the ditches at the roadside by the most phenomenal starlight I've ever seen. We wished that the low, wispy clouds would blow away so we could see things more clearly, and then we realised that these clouds were actually pinprick galaxies filling the darkness between the constellations with their gentle light

But tonight's experience was of a different kind. The background wonder was there as always, but allied to it was a determination that for once I wouldn't just experience, but learn. I nipped indoors, printed off a webpage that showed what I should expect to see in the night sky in our part of the world, and returned, torch in hand, cigar in mouth, to do my homework.

Mercifully, the plough/big dipper/Ursa Major was obvious. Low on the horizon by midnight. From there I traced Draco's tail swishing just above, fainter but still visible; her triangular head standing proud and poised to strike. Ursa Minor was harder, but once I found Polaris she showed herself, while up above her, Cepheus cut a precise rhombic form. It took a while, but once I'd spotted Cassiopeia's sideways 'w', Perseus and Auriga fell into place just below, and off to the east were the Pleiades whose name I only knew from the book of Job.


And it's there that I want to rest for a moment, because that cluster of stars, more than any other I think, illustrates the principle that some things are better seen when not looked at directly. When I set my focus just to the side of the Pleiades I saw the individual stars resolve out of the corner of my eye, and they seemed to shine brightly. When I looked straight at them, they faded and several seemed to disappear altogether.

And there's something in that, isn't there? But rather than post some half-assed idea to round off this little episode of "The Sky At Night" I'm going to think about what that 'something' might be and get back to you. Twinkle twinkle for now.