A great meandering milky swath of stars that can never be seen from under bright city lights is readily visible overhead on summer nights from distant suburbs and rural locations. Once, years ago, residents of New York City had an opportunity to see this remarkable Milky Way, our galaxy's central concentration of stars.
July 13 will mark the 25th anniversary of a night I will always remember. At about 9:30 p.m., lightning from a severe thunderstorm struck a power plant at Indian Point, New York.
A sudden power failure plunged all of New York City into darkness.
With the City's sodium vapor streetlights extinguished, I suddenly had at a dazzling night sky at my disposal.
Twelve years prior, a nearly full Moon had shone like a giant spotlight during the Great Northeast Blackout of November 1965. But on this balmy midsummer night in 1977, our natural satellite was no hindrance to stargazing; it rose as a slender sliver after midnight.
able --> I lived in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx and spent the entire night observing with my 4-inch reflecting telescope. Here are some notes I scribbled in an observing log during that night of a quarter-century ago:
Scanning the sky from Cassiopeia through Scutum, the Milky Way shone brilliantly. Despite the occasional flicker of lightning in the distance, stars down to magnitude 5.4 could be seen with the unaided eye. The best view came at 3 a.m. I saw quite a few faint meteors, as well as all of Ursa Minor [the Big Dipper]. I was also able to see the Great Andromeda Galaxy easily with no optical aid, and viewed a host of deep-sky objects I would normally never attempt to look for from my home."
The magical night ended with the thin crescent Moon, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and the orange star Aldebaran all lined up in the eastern sky at dawn, followed by a beautiful sunrise.
What you can see
Even under brightly lit skies, there are some worthy sites in the summer Milky Way right now, while the Moon is not overly bright.
Several clouds of stars surrounded and contrasted by a few dark regions can be spotted with binoculars in the area of the Milky Way about halfway between the star Altair and the constellation of Sagittarius. Four faint stars in a stretched-out diamond are about all that is visible of Scutum, the Shield.
The Shield was described as a constellation by Hevelius, a 17th century astronomer, who christened it with the fantastic moniker Scutum Sobiesciarium in honor of John Sobieski, a Polish king who defeated the Turks at Vienna in 1683.
Near the northern star of the Shield is the 11th entry in Charles Messier's famous catalogue of "fuzzy" objects masquerading as comets. Messier 11 is one of the richest and most compact of clusters, described by one experienced observer as resembling "a flight of wild ducks."
Cosmic cloud
Before the invention of the telescope, the true nature of the Milky Way Galaxy ("Gala" is Greek for milk) was a mystery. Binoculars and telescopes reveal that the galaxy consists of dense clouds of individual stars, such as one in Scutum.
For observers in the Northern Hemisphere, the brightest part of the Milky Way is in the constellation of Sagittarius, near the star Al Nasl. In fact, this region is roughly our galaxy's center. It marks the "hub" or central condensation -- an area of density and complexity that requires somewhat dark skies to be seen.
Even to the unaided eye under dark skies, the view is one of excitement and beauty.
The Sagittarius Star Cloud, about 30,000 light-years distant, seems to be the nucleus, with the Sun and all the outer stars of the galaxy revolving around it at the rate of 155 miles per second (250 km/s). It apparently requires about 200 million of our earthly years to make one complete revolution, or one "cosmic year," around the center of our galaxy.
Oh, incidentally, I moved out of the Bronx in 1984. I lived there almost 20 years, but aside from that very special July night in 1977, I never again saw the Milky Way from my house.
More Astrophotography by Jeffrey MacQuarrie
See also a map to go along with the MacQuarrie photo at the top-right of this page.
More galaxy photos by David Malin
See other galaxies, some of which are similar to our own.Main Spacewatch Page
Sky calendar, Moon phases, and more backyard astronomy tips and news.
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