Every year around this time, most of us in North America set our clocks back one hour from “daylight saving” to “standard” time.
And I suspect that, unless they change automatically, many of us just let our car and microwave clocks stay the same time all year long!
Why we continue going through this archaic ritual is a mystery to me, but we do.
We can thank Benjamin Franklin for the idea he conceived in a 1784 essay, but it took more than a century before the United States adopted the idea.
It was on March 19, 1918, that U.S. law established the Standard Time Act. This not only established time zones across the United States but created daylight saving time — a concept still not accepted by all U.S. states and territories.
For those living where it’s used, remember to set your clock back one hour on Sunday, Nov. 3, and expect the sun to set one hour earlier that evening and rise one hour earlier the next morning.
Stargazers who enjoy evening observing will be happy since the stars will appear sooner and we can get to bed at a reasonable hour.
During these early nights, we can see one of the most famous of all star groupings: Pegasus. In ancient Greek mythology, Pegasus was the horse that Perseus flew to rescue Andromeda from a sea monster.
You can spend your time searching for a flying horse in the sky if you’d like, but without some chemical assistance, you’ll find it quite challenging.
I always suggest to my stargazing guests to look instead for a nearly perfect square of four equally bright stars.
Not coincidentally, this is known to astronomers as the Great Square of Pegasus, and it appears this month midway up in the eastern sky not long after dark.
If you have trouble finding it, look for the much more prominent “W” of Cassiopeia midway up in the northeast. In the nearby illustration, you can see how to use its stars to create an arrow that will take you right to the large square.
Fans of our national pastime may instead prefer to see this square as a Great Celestial Baseball Diamond, especially with the 2024 World Series now underway between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees.
Highest in this square — sorry, diamond — lies a star marking home plate.
Moving counterclockwise around the diamond, we encounter first, second and third bases.
With some imagination, a creative stargazer may even spot the pitcher, catcher, shortstop, umpires, on-deck batter and base coaches along the way.
Yes, it takes a bit of imagination, but not as much as finding half of an upside-down flying horse in the sky! For some, a flying horse may be a reminder of the current political climate in the United States, for if you recall, only the front half of the horse appears.
“Why only the front half? What happened to the rear end of the horse?” you may ask.
Well, the ancient Greeks had an explanation that I believe more every day. They claimed that the back half of the horse fell to Earth and became — and I quote — “the current breed of politician.”
Nothing ever seems to change!
