THE EVENING SKY AT THE WINTER SOLSTICE

Too Long; Didn't Read

The magic of the starry heavens does not fail with the decline of the sun in winter, but, on the contrary, increases in power when the curtains of the night begin to close so early that by six o’clock the twilight is gone and the firmament has become a dome of jet ablaze with clusters of living gems. And when the snows arrive, mantling the hills with glistening ermine, the coruscating splendor of the sky seems to be redoubled. If I were to choose a time most suitable for interesting a novice in the beauties and wonders of uranography, I would select the winter, and I would lead my acolyte, on a clear, frosty night, when the landscape was glittering with crusted snow, upon some eminence where the curve of the horizon was broken only by the leafless tops of a few trees, through which the rising stars would flash like electric lamps. The accord between the stars and the seasons is never more evident than at such a time and in such a place, and the psychology of the stars is then most strongly felt. When the earth is locked fast in the bonds of winter the sparkling heavens seem most alive. I would have, if it were possible, a clump of dark pines or hemlocks near the place of observation, throwing their shadows on the snow, while Sirius in all its wild beauty blazed above them, and Aldebaran, Rigel, and Betelgeuse filled the vibrant air about them with jewelled lances of prismatic light. Then the sound of sleigh-bells in the resonant atmosphere would seem an aerial music shaken from the scintillant sky, and a lurking fox, stealing from his den in the edge of the shadows, would appear timorously conscious of the splendor over his head. The nocturnal animals know a day more glorious than ours, but it is never so glorious as when its multi-colored rays splinter upon crystalled hills at the winter solstice.