Dark skies mean great viewing of the heavens
“The skies of North America are covered in stars, over factories and farms, over hamlets and bars.” — Gordon Lightfoot
Many parts of the Upper Peninsula are blessed with magnificent dark skies for viewing the wonders of the heavens.
Away from towns, especially with a cold crispness in the clear night air, the blackness reveals planets, meteors, satellites and more amid an incredible display of twinkling, diamond stars, shimmering within their ancient constellations.
From Presque Isle Park in Marquette to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, parks are often a great place to find nighttime sky-gazing opportunities.
Michigan has seven state parks in the Lower Peninsula designated as “dark sky” parks. In the U.P., while there are no state parks with dark sky designations, Van Riper, Tahquamenon Falls and Fayette state parks are among the great viewing areas.
Of course, there are countless other corners of this peninsula where a sky watcher can find a place to sit comfortably with a blanket, a beverage and some binoculars, or a telescope or a camera to enjoy the beautiful wintry night.
This coming week might afford some particularly fantastic viewing if a watcher can get a break between the forecasted clouds and snow – and then there’s the moon.
The light from a full moon is expected to dim some of the brilliance of the celestial show, but the Geminid meteor shower will peak at about 2 a.m. local time, Wednesday, Dec. 14.
At its height, this meteor shower can deliver up to 120 meteors per hour, with the bright shooting stars of this event matching the brilliance and frequency of the August Perseids meteor shower.
Meteors in the Geminids shower are expected to be more plentiful as the night of Dec. 13 turns into early morning of Dec. 14. The nights before and after the peak activity also offer chances to look for meteors shooting from the constellation Gemini the Twins, which is the source of the meteor shower’s name, situated in the east-northeast part of the sky.
The bright stars Castor and Pollux are located within the Gemini the Twins constellation, which appears as two walking stick figure humans holding hands, with Castor and Pollux forming the two heads.
Seeing a meteor shower can be an astonishing experience for anyone. Today’s digital information age makes doing this easier with numerous websites and phone apps available to aid sky watchers in their attempts to reach for the sky.
In addition to meteors, there’s the magical constellations of stars, many of which we learned to find and memorize the names of as children. Our northern December skies afford us familiar favorites like the Great Square of Pegasus, the Big Dipper, Cygnus the Swan and Orion the Hunter, along with perhaps lesser known formations including the rabbit-head-shaped Lepus, Draco, Cepheus and Fornax.
Venus, Uranus, Jupiter and Mars are also visible this month, depending on your viewing equipment and capability, with that big, full moon on the 13th, last quarter moon on the 20th and a new moon on the 29th.
Sky watchers can also spot the International Space Station as it passes into view over the Upper Peninsula. NASA provides times, dates, directions and elevations for the station, depending on geographic location, via a link at the Night Sky Network website (https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm).
For example, from Marquette, tonight through the peak date of the Geminids meteor shower, the space station will can be seen for up to 5-minute durations in the early evening. The station will appear about 10 degrees above the horizon to the west-northwest and disappear from view at a range of directions and degrees, with specifics found on the webpage.
While many people might have to travel for at least a couple of hours to shed the glow of city lights to see the stars, here in the Outdoors North, we have many dark, fascinating, beautiful places for us to enjoy the night skies year-round – thank the heavens for that.
Editor’s note: Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.