I had set an alarm this morning so I would not miss the Gemini meteor shower. Other than the lights on the western horizon (the house atop Panther knob--that needs lights to avoid low-flying aircraft) and Fairview Church of the Brethren--that is causing excessive light pollution for reasons I cannot fathom) there was no light in the darkness at 3:30.
I was disappointed, have looked ahead at the coming week's entrance into full-on winter, including a potentially significant snow-fall mid-week.
But I look up from time to time from my desk, and keep just the barest of lights on other than my computer monitor. And I looked out my window here around 5:00 and the sky was full of stars. Orion wheeled towards the horizon due west of me, and Sirius arced towards Panther Knob from where I sat. I wasted no time getting out from under this roof.
And a mercy, the temperature was almost summer-evening mild and winds just enough to make me glad I'd grabbed a windbreaker and my red stocking cap. We won't have night-time temps like that for a good little while now--likely not until late March.
The Geminids did not disappoint, with a total of maybe 40 in as many minutes, unevenly spread in spritzes of a few, then none, then all at once a steady stream of several a minute, coming in all directions, radiating approximately from Gemini.
We are truly blessed with uncommonly dark skies for the crowded, humid Eastern US. And I am seeing things--for this reason of darkness and the physical openness of this space--that I never saw since moving back to Virginia in 1997.
This morning's addition to my stellar "life list" was the Beehive Cluster—first unaided, then with the binoculars. Now that I have seen it, I will never NOT SEE IT again. This sky feature (like the Lagoon Nebula I wrote about in a similar natural-history-of-the-sky piece some while ago) is now a part of my "place" in the Cosmos--a benchmark and now familiar prominence in my still-expanding Greater Environment and Home on—and far beyond—Earth.
If your skies are sufficiently clear and dark, you can see the Beehive, like I did this morning for the first time, with the naked eye. You can find it by referencing the Twins, Castor and Pollux, in the constellation Gemini. Earth and Sky will tell you how.
Do your homework, and when you are fortunate enough to have your endurance of cold early-or-lateness rewarded by your first sighting, you will already KNOW the Beehive.