Sam Schaus

Polaris, the North Star, sits at the celestial pole. From the perspective of Earth’s northern hemisphere, this star does not appear to move at all while every other star in the night sky rotates around Polaris. A good Timelapse video will show the slightest of movements, but not enough to make a difference. 

In the chaotic world of the universe, or the seas, or the wilderness, or even suburban life, Polaris’ steadiness has always been welcome, as the one unchanging, unmoving thing in the natural world. Shifting sands in the desert makes navigation potentially deadly; the waves and vastness of the ocean make losing one’s way easy. Yet, the North Star is the literal guiding light at night when a wanderer cannot use the sun or the horizon to triangulate or position themselves in the world. 

At times Polaris is covered by clouds, but there are other ways to find the North Star, or what is close enough to the North Star to navigate. The easiest way, if you can see them amidst the clouds, is to find the two stars on the scoop end of what we call the big dipper – Dubhe and Merak. A line drawn using these two stars as a guide points almost directly to the North Star, 30 degrees away. 

One year for Christmas my parents bought me a telescope, encouraging my interest in the night sky. At the time we lived far enough outside of town for light pollution to be minimal, but my status as an amateur astronomer was so amateur that I mistook airplanes high in the sky for stars for a few seconds until I realized they were moving and blinking. 

As kids are wont to do (perhaps I should say, are supposed to do), they get over excited on Christmas morning and must try every toy or gift as soon as they can. My father put together the cheap refractor telescope, which I probably circled in the Sears Catalog. I would say I helped him assemble everything, but we all know I was more in the way than helpful. Once it was assembled we rushed to the front porch to test out our night sky observation tool in the mid-morning sunshine, just to make sure it worked. 

We decided to point it straight at a bird feeder hanging from one of the front yard trees. It took longer than I expected to get the bird feeder within sight. Every minor move I made with the telescope was multiplied by the magnification of its lens. When I finally located my target I paused for a moment to look extra carefully. 

“Do you see it?” My father asked. 

“Yeah, but this thing’s broken.” 

“The telescope?” 

“Yeah, the birdhouse shows up upside down.” 

“Really? Let me look.” He bent down to look through the eye-piece, and in typical Schaus fashion, had a pragmatic answer. “I guess you won’t know if the stars are upside down or not. Or, at least, it won’t matter.” 

That was the day I learned there were different types of telescopes, and that the one I got as a Christmas present was made as cost-effectively as possible. This is not a disparaging remark since the telescope did fulfill its purpose: to give me a closer view of the night sky and encourage me to explore the heavens some more. 

One extra mirror inside the body of the telescope in the right place and at the right angle would have corrected the image to be exactly what I see through my eyes. But, as my father quickly and astutely pointed out, I did not buy this telescope to look at birdhouses and I would not notice if the stars were upside down or not.  

I lost that memory of Christmas morning for over twenty years, until my father died. For some weeks and months after my father died, and even still from time to time, it feels like I’m looking through that telescope again. Where once the world was oriented the right way, it is now, sometimes, disoriented. Birds still fly to the bird feeder, but I can’t understand how they do so upside down, or how the spilled bird seed falls up.  

Dad was one of those mirrors, placed in the right spot, to help me orient myself to the world. Everything that didn’t make sense, he helped make sense of. Every question, he helped frame or put into context. When I made a mistake or failed, he helped me rethink as an opportunity for growth. He helped me navigate my way through my life and make sense of the darkness and vastness of the world around me.  

There is another constellation in our night sky, which the Greeks called Draco. The ancient Egyptians believed this constellation to be a crocodile while it reminded the Greeks of a dragon. In the tail of this dragon is an unimpressive star called Thuban. It is unimpressive in terms of brightness and magnitude, yet it was the most important star in the night sky 5000 years ago. Although it is not important to us today, it was very important to the ancient Egyptians (we know this because they wrote about it), because 5000 years ago Thuban was the North Star. Thuban was the star at the celestial pole which all other stars seemed to rotate around. 

From our perspective, the stars in the night sky have precisely fixed positions and patterns. They have fixed points in the sky that we rotate under, moving underneath them as the earth rotates. But as the earth rotates under these stars, it is influenced by the gravitational pulls of the sun and moon. These competing gravitational pulls cause the Earth to wobble as it spins on its axis. This wobble is known as procession. 

A complete procession cycle takes around 26,000 years. This is quite a gradual shift, but an important one. Because of procession the earth will go through many different North Stars as the earth wobbles. In 20,000 years Thuban will be the star at the celestial pole again. A few thousand years after that it will be Polaris’s turn at the top spot. And, about 2000 years from today we won’t even have a true North Star. Instead, North will have to be triangulated and calculated by a few different stars, primarily Polaris (since it will still be relatively close to the celestial pole) and Gamma Cephei, or Errai, which will be the closest star to the celestial pole.

How we navigate through our lives tends to change over time. For me, that North Star will always be the life and teachings of Jesus mixed with the examples and experiences I had with my parents as they tried to show me how to live in conjunction with those same teachings, especially when the world does not. But, the procession, or wobble, of my life reorients the world and how I see the world around me in relation to that North Star. 

Sometimes the wobble is slow, other times it is rapid and abrupt, like at the death of a loved one or a parent, or becoming a parent yourself. When we process through life, the position of the rest of the stars changes, the night sky looks different, and we must reorient ourselves. Luckily, I had two wonderful parents help guide my efforts of reorienting, and, as I reflect on my father this Father’s Day, I only hope I can do the same for my sons.