How can Tolkien's characters see stars during the daytime?

Question

In many places throughout Tolkien's works, he describes his characters seeing stars in the sky during daylight hours, usually when the characters are passing through deep, narrow canyons or ravines. For instance, it happens to the Grey Party in the canyon of Dunharrow, in The Return of the King, and to Tuor and Voronwë as they pass through the Orfalch Echor on the way to Gondolin, in the first chapter of Unfinished Tales.

In the real world, there was a very long lived old wives tale along these lines: According to many otherwise reliable sources, such as Aristotle and Sir John Herschel, a person at the bottom of a canyon, mineshaft, or extremely tall chimney can see stars during daylight hours. Unfortunately for these sources, this is absolute nonsense. Scientists have, on more than one occasion, attempted to test this idea, and the result is always the same: Unless there is a solar eclipse, you can't see stars with the naked eye during daylight hours under any circumstances, ever. It has been calculated that, to be visible to the naked eye during daylight hours, a star would have to be at least 5 times brighter than the brightest star in the sky.

I'm wondering if Tolkien fell for the same tall tale as Aristotle and Sir John Herschel - that is to say, if he believed that a person in the real world could see stars with the naked eye during daylight hours - or if he is saying that things worked differently in Middle-earth 6,000 years ago than they do now.

The latter possibility is certainly plausible in the context of the stories, because he also describes a lake in which the night sky is always reflected, even during the daytime (Lake Mirrormere, located just outside the gates of Khazad-dûm/Moria).

So there are basically two possible explanations:

• People in Middle-earth can see the stars because of magic and stuff, which wouldn't be surprising, since magic is very real in Tolkien's world.

• People in Middle-earth can see the stars because Tolkien believed the old wives tale.

The former option is more appealing, but I think the latter option is more likely.

Why do I think the latter option is more likely? Because elsewhere in his works, Tolkien seems to support other old wives tales, such as the now-debunked belief that it is unhealthy to drink extremely cold water. This belief was fairly common until the middle of the 20th century, for reasons that I don't fully understand. Tolkien seems to have believed it, and his characters act as though it were true.

Is there any way to determine which of these two possibilities is the real explanation? Do Tolkien's characters see the stars because Middle-earth is different from the world we live in, or because Tolkien believed an old wives tale?

Answer 1

As one can see from, for example, the discussion of the calendar and the length of the year in Appendix D of The Lord of the Rings, Middle-earth was conceived as being part of Earth at (as Tolkien says in one of his letters) "a different stage of imagination".

Tolkien doesn't introduce "magic" into his narrative without a very specific narrative purpose; so one should be cautious about interpreting any given unusual event as "magic".

The first place in The Lord of the Rings which instances people seeing stars by day (and then only indirectly) is, as you point out, when Gimli and Frodo look in the Mirrormere:

They stooped over the dark water. At first they could see nothing. Then slowly they saw the forms of the encircling mountains mirrored in a profound blue, and the peaks were like plumes of white flame above them; beyond there was a space of sky. There like jewels sunk in the deep shone glinting stars, though sunlight was in the sky above. Of their own stooping forms no shadow could be seen.

(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 6, "Lothlórien"; emphasis added)

Clearly some magic is intended here; cf. the last stanza of Gimli's poem in Moria:

But still the sunken stars appear
In dark and windless Mirrormere;
There lies his crown in water deep,
Till Durin wakes again from sleep.

On the other hand, at the passing of the Grey Company through the Paths of the Dead, there is no obvious reason to believe magic is in play:

Suddenly [Gimli] heard the tinkle of water, a sound hard and clear as a stone falling into a dream of dark shadow. Light grew, and lo! the company passed through another gateway, high-arched and broad, and a rill ran out beside them; and beyond, going steeply down, was a road between sheer cliffs, knife-edged against the sky far above. So deep and narrow was that chasm that the sky was dark, and in it small stars glinted. Yet as Gimli after learned it was still two hours ere sunset of the day on which they had set out from Dunharrow; though for all that he could then tell it might have been twilight in some later year, or in some other world.

(The Return of the King, Book V, Chapter 2, "The Passing of the Grey Company"; emphasis added)

A similar statement holds for the passage in "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin":

Tuor saw that they stood at the end of a ravine, the like of which he had never before beheld or imagined in his thought, long though he had walked in the wild mountains of the North; for beside the Orfalch Echor Cirith Ninniach was but a groove in the rock. Here the hands of the Valar themselves, in ancient wars of the world's beginning, had wrested the great mountains asunder, and the sides of the rift were sheer as if axe-cloven, and they lowered up to heights unguessable. There far aloft ran a ribbon of sky, and against its deep blue stood black peaks and jagged pinnacles, remote but hard, cruel as spears. Too high were those mighty walls for the winter sun to overlook, and though it was now full morning faint stars glimmered above the mountain-tops, and down below all was dim, but for the pale light of lamps set beside the climbing road.

(Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, Chapter I, "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin"; emphasis added)

Thus we do appear to be on Earth (as we know it nowadays), and in two of three cases, this seems to be an effect independent of magic. On the other hand, Tolkien never—as far as I can discover—appears to state outright his belief (as the author, not the narrator) that one can indeed see stars in the daytime under such circumstances.

I conclude that there is no specific evidence supporting the statement that Tolkien the man believed the "old wives' tale" you mention, but on the other hand there is no reason to believe that this was an effect introduced by Tolkien because Middle-earth was "different" or "magic".

Answer 2

Because Tolkien believed this was a real phenomena

In The Lord of the Rings: A Readers Companion, Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond offer the following as commentary (quoted from Carl Hostetter) to the Paths of the Dead passage:

788 (III: 61). So deep and narrow was that chasm that the sky was dark, and in it small stars glinted. Yet as Gimli after learned it was still two hours ere sunset - David Cofield comments in ‘Harbinger of Fate: The Eclipse of 3019’ in Beyond Bree, October 1993, that it was an ‘ancient tradition that observers at the bottom of a deep gorge, cavern, well, or chimney are able to see stars in the daylight sky’, but recent research has shown ‘that the glare of the sun and the atmospheric scattering of its light make it impossible to see any star (except the sun itself) from the earth’s surface [in daylight] with the naked eye’ (p. 3). In reply, Carl F. Hostetter comments in a letter to Beyond Bree for November 1993 that even if the ‘chimney effect’ is disproved, ‘it is clear from Tolkien’s own explanation that he believed [it] to be an authentic phenomenon, which is really all that matters’ (p. 8).
_{The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion - Book V Chapter 2}

Or alternatively, as Hostetter has demonstrated in an appendix to his recent The Nature of Middle-earth book, the metaphysics of Middle-earth very much follows Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. So perhaps even if Tolkien himself was aware that this was not possible in the real world, it was still possible in his universe.

Answer 3

Since you don't know the absolute magnitude of stars in Middle-earth, you can't say if they would be visible by day or not.

Answer 4

It's just my own opinion here, but I think Tolkien used these "old wife's tales" as part of the mythical setting to his tales (even though they were set on Earth). Thus, the Sun and the Moon actually go around the Earth, and there are perhaps several other such "inaccuracies" presented as the real thing.

Answer 5

These sources say either it is impossible to see stars during the day or else it is very, very difficult and you have to know where to look, etc.

There is a video which allegedly shows Vega during the daytime.

Back around 2000 I went out before dawn to watch a meteor shower. I could see stars in the sky for about as long as I could see meteors. When the sky got too light to see stars and meteors I went back home, and then it was light enough on the ground to see vapor rising from a large pile of wood chips about 500 feet away.

So in my own experience I could see "shooting stars" until shortly before sunrise.

I think that Legolas and other Elves with their super vision could probably see stars in some daylight conditions. I wonder if Gimli the Dwarf had better vision than Men, and if Tuor was a special case who got better vision and a few other Elven perks when he was born because Eru knew he was destined to choose to become an Elf.

Tolkien did sometimes use "old wives tales" such as a ant queen controlling the colony with some type of telepathy - in that particular case I don't know if that simile was written by Frodo who might have believed it or was introduced by Tolkien the translator.