Grasping the Familiar

A week or so has passed since we had a clear night.  Around 10 last night I went outside and found the Pleiades rising in the east and Cassiopeia overhead.  Earth had not yet rotated into view of most of the stars I've been familiarizing myself with.

I woke up a little after 5 this morning and went out again.  The air was cold and crisp and the sky very dark.  The Big Dipper of Ursa Major was bright and high, visible from the porch.  That was a surprise, as in earlier fall mornings about this time it has been much lower and farther to the north.

I moved around to the west side of the house, which is dark and has an opening through the tree canopy.  There were a few stars overhead, but no pattern I could recognize.  I had to move out in the street before I saw the top of Orion over the house and was able to orient myself to how much the sky had rotated.  Then I could find the Pleiades again, moving down toward the western horizon and partly obscured by bare branches from a tree next door.

I realized how quick I was to look for the familiar, stars and constellations that I recognized that would orient me, and how unsettled it feels to be looking up at stars without that sense of knowing.

Why is that?  The star isn't changed just because I recognize it as a particular object that someone else has named, and I can attach that name to it.  If it is familiar patterns and orientation that I am the most drawn to, rather than the stars themselves, what does that mean about what motivates me, what I am really looking for when I go out in the dark to look up at the heavens?

The familiar gives a sense of security.  It also seems that the recognition of something new, as an expansion of knowledge, an addition to the inventory of known things, is somehow compelling, and to recognize something as new you first have to recognize what is already known.

I had the thought that instead of trying to learn the accepted star map and focusing on whether I can recognize this constellation or that star, I might enjoy just making my own.   The two things - my own exploration and sorting out of patterns and relationships - and the commonly accepted constellations and asterisms - will connect eventually.