OF STARS AND NIGHT SKY

Random Rants

There is a  faint star formation called  "seven sisters"

which you can't possibly see with naked eyes if you live in a modern polluted  city. Decades back, when the cities were not polluted one could see this costellation in the night sky on a moonless night.

In the northern skies there is  another constellation of seven stars called great Bear or Ursula major. In India it is known as Sapta Rishi.

It is brighter than the Seven Sisters. There is a faint star next to the second star of Great Bear tail. You can see this on a clear night only if you have perfect vision. This dim star is known as "arundhati".

Summer is the time of nature's fury in the plains of India as the Sun scalds everything at a hundred and ten plus temperature during the day. But summer nights in the open are blissful.

We always slept outside in the lawn in my childhood, on cots on  a raised cemented platform known popularly as Chabutara.

It was in those days that I came in contact with the limitless and timeless universe. My father had a phenomenal knowledge of the skies and he was my encyclopaedia during my early years. From him I learnt to identify the planets of our solar system, the stars and the constellations. In the western sky there was that constellation called ORION HUNTERS  with the belt of three bright stars.

The Milky Way  sweeps across the sky above from the southern horizon to the northern. It is  faint, like a hazy white dust.t

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