Path Across the Stars
Everything I gained when I left science denial behind
If you live in a city, as I do, you can spot between 400 and 800 stars on a sufficiently clear night. In areas with less light pollution, like rural Virginia or backwoods Alabama, that number multiplies to 15,000.
The majority of visible stars, even without light pollution, are relatively close by astronomical standards. Most in the northern hemisphere have never seen our nearest celestial neighbor, Alpha Centauri, but the bright star Sirius is “only” 80 trillion kilometers away. The light perceived today from Sirius was produced just eight and a half years ago, the same month that The Walking Dead first premiered on AMC. Polaris, the familiar North Star, lies 433 light-years above the ecliptic plane; its light was produced shortly before Shakespeare began writing The Taming of the Shrew.
But some visible stars are much farther away. The constellation Cassiopeia, immortalized in my favorite rom-com Serendipity, has a dim sixth star named Rho Cassiopeia below its feet. It lies 3,400 light-years away, and…
