Nowadays, the Sun rises as I drive to work, and daylight has become an ever-decreasing commodity. We’re well past the Equinox at this point, and the weather has finally turned cooler, no longer lingering far behind that astronomical milestone. Maybe it’s the angle of the sunshine that seems to concentrate it, or the chill in the air, but the change of seasons heightens the senses. Especially at nightfall, every sound, smell and color all seem much more intense this time of year.

Lightning bugs have been replaced by crickets, and their serenade is always my first impression of the night when I walk out the doorway. For the most part, songbirds have already flown south, so their dawn chorus is gone, now supplanted by Canada geese honking on their commute from the marshlands in the evening and morning twilight. Fall sounds are louder and travel farther in the still air: leaves blowing among the trees nearby, dogs barking down the street or a truck passing on a highway miles away.

It smells like fall too, earthy and damp, like the fields where the snow geese spend their day. Breeze from the shoreline brings the decidedly rotten-egg aroma of the nearby salt marsh especially on frosty mornings. Temperatures swing wildly from day to night and week to week: summer is having trouble letting go.

Colors are richer as well, and not just the brilliant blue of the clear sky. Green has mostly been replaced by yellows and browns on the ground, while red and oranges develop in the trees. Conifers emerge among leafless branches. Twilight begins and ends as a tangerine glow grading into the nighttime in shades of deep blue and gray. A hint of color can be seen under the autumn full Moon, noticeably brighter and higher than it ever was in summertime.

The humidity of summer which permeates everything has parted in two. Half has condensed to dew, which plays optical trickery with the morning sunlight and makes leaves stick to your shoes. What remains suspended as ground fog adds a depth to the atmosphere; houses and trees just down the street appear a good deal farther away. The other half of summer’s dampness has gone straight upward to the sky and crystallized as wispy cirrus. Is that a sun-dog beside the filtered Sun?

The familiar sky sets: the Summer Triangle arrows downward toward due west, while Scorpius and Sagittarius are scarcely visible in the twilight above the southern horizon—Jupiter shows where these constellations are. Stars overhead are not bright, but they are united by a watery theme and dominated by three constellations of the zodiac. Capricornus the Sea Goat, Aquarius the Water Bearer, and Pisces the Fishes. These are joined by other aquatic constellations: the Southern Fish Pisces Austrinus, the Dolphin Delphinus, the Whale Cetus and the River Eridanus, which flows mostly right below the horizon. Early risers are greeted by Winter’s bright sky to the east composed of first magnitude stars from Taurus, Auriga, Canis Major and Minor, Orion and Gemini. This year these beacons are joined by Mars forming a Red Triangle set within the Winter Hexagon. Though much lower to the east, Venus out shines all other stars and planets.

Even if Autumn’s sky pales in comparison, it does hold a gem or two that the clear, autumn skies show well. Nearly directly overhead, the Andromeda Galaxy can be glimpsed with the unaided eye, but binoculars or any telescope will show spiral arms and dark lanes. These are in fact just like those you can see in Cygnus over your shoulder to the west. While not quite twins of our Milky Way home, the galactic spirals of Andromeda or the nearby Pinwheel are pretty much what we look like to anyone in the rest of the Universe. Certainly worth a moment of reflection during the lengthening nights of Autumn. And maybe a smile back at the galaxy—just in case anyone is looking down on us …

Moondark is written by Doug Miller, published at the Moondark web site, and printed in the Delmarva Star Gazers' Star Gazer News. This document was last revised on 24 October 2007. Text and images on this web page are free for non-commercial use with attribution under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 3.0 License. Ask Doug about other uses.