Ashwini: the first spark

A nakshatra is one of twenty-seven slices of the sky. The moon crosses roughly one of them a night. Ashwini is the first.

The essay's argument: a nakshatra is a place before it is a personality, and most writing about them never goes outside. So it starts with the object. Ashwini is two stars near the top of the star pattern we call the Ram, close enough that two fingers at arm's length cover the gap. The brighter is Sheratan. The fainter, Mesarthim, is really two stars almost on top of each other, which a small telescope splits. Just to one side is orange Hamal, the brightest star of the Ram. The three make a short bent line, brightest to faintest. Learn that line and you never have to hunt for Ashwini again.

Then the practical problem. In mid June the Ram is not an evening object. From Delhi it clears the eastern horizon at about a quarter to two in the morning and never climbs high. By the time the sky begins to whiten, a little after four, it has reached about a third of the way up. So: a terrace in the last hour before dawn, facing east, looking low. Rain on the coasts, dust in the north.

Then the name. Ashwini comes from ashva, horse. The old story is about twins who ride ahead of the dawn in a golden chariot and put broken things back together. It is a story about the hour before sunrise, told by people who were awake in it.

The tradition hangs a temperament on the place: speed, starting things, a hand for repair. The writer passes it on and refuses to sharpen it into a verdict. Nobody is a doctor because of where the moon was. What Ashwini is usefully about, she says, is starting, and starting is something you can decide about.

A panchang, the traditional Indian daily almanac, has a column for the nakshatra the moon is in tonight. So about once a month you can walk out and see the moon where the table said it would be.