The following column was published in The Tablet in November 2010 Orion is rising at around 8 pm this time of year, a harbinger of winter. If you have dark skies, no clouds, and a good southern horizon, look about midnight low in the sky for a pair of stars beneath Orion’s feet. They point to a globular cluster of stars called M79. It’s a pleasant sight in a small telescope. Globular clusters consist of half a million stars grouped into a ball only a few light years across. They’re thought to be the framework around which galaxies formed some ten billion years ago; thus they are mostly found orbiting about the centers of galaxies. But this time of year the center of our Milky Way galaxy, with most its globular clusters, lies on the opposite side of the sky from us, among the stars visible only in summertime. So what’s M79 doing here, all by itself, on this side … Continue reading →