Is it possible to find the moment of New Year just by knowing the stars?
The star cluster known as the Pleiades comes to its highest place in the sky this week. You can find it looking high in the East at 8 pm.
The Pleiades are the most storied about group of stars around the world, and in the tradition of people native to the upper Great Lakes region, they were used as a calendar to mark the New Year, long before the Gregorian calendar came into use in the 1700s.
Local legend holds that the Pleiades were the children of a local tribe who danced up into the sky while trying, without permission, to imitate the ceremonial practice of their elders. Their fateful dance took place at the darkest time of the year, while their parents were fast asleep. When the elders finally did awake, they followed the sound of their children’s song, only to witness the children ascending into the sky.
Then a voice was heard saying: “Do not grieve too much. We are on an endless journey, a trail of dance and song. In summer watch us coming by way of the south to the setting Sun. In the winter you will see us coming by way of the north toward the rising Sun. When we are directly overhead, observe the ceremonies.”
Each year at this time, the ceremony of the New Year was held when Pleiades is highest in the sky, but not until five sleeps after the Winter’s New Moon.
This week, the waning gibbous Moon will guide you to Pleiades, looking north and east about an hour after sunset on New Year’s Eve. The star cluster will carry us all across the threshold of night and into the New Year, only setting with the Moon at 4:45 am on January 1, 2015.