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Finding your inner hero: this week on The Dark Sky

Today, June 20th, is Summer Solstice, when the Sun reaches its highest place above the Celestial Equator. Today the Moon also comes to full phase, and because this happens opposite the Sun, it means that today the Moon is at the lowest point, in the region of the sky where we find our galactic center.

The "galactic center" is the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy where contemporary science suggests there is a supermassive black hole. It took centuries to figure this out, but there are clues that the ancients also had ideas about black holes, and we can find them in the stories of this season when the best region of the Milky Way start to come into view.

Take the story of the constellation Andromeda. She's chained to a rock because of her mother's vanity and is threatened with being devoured by the ocean beast Cetus, the whale. Andromeda is rising up in the north east just before midnight this week, and is home to the Andromeda Galaxy, the furthest object away from us that is visible to the naked eye.

According to the myth, the devouring ocean beast Cetus is born out of the roiling Black Sea waters in the Pontus region and is described in a way that's a lot like contemporary descriptions of black holes: massive dark regions that devour everything in their wake and from which nothing can escape.

Astronomers today tell us that because of the way galaxies and black holes behave, the Milky Way Galaxy will one day smash into the Andromeda Galaxy, kind of the way the ancients said that Cetus would devour Andromeda. But here's where ancient concepts diverge from contemporary thought: in the myth, Andromeda's fate is not sealed, she's actually rescued by the intervening hero of the human spirit, Perseus. Through Perseus, the ancients revealed their belief that human beings can act in ways that can forestall an otherwise terrible fate~ by exhibiting compassion, courage, and even a bit of rash cleverness.

There's no better time than a Summer Solstice Full Moon for finding your own intervening hero of the human spirit!

Position of Summer Solstice Full Moon from Guy Ottewell's Astronomical Calendar, available at www.universalworkshop.com.