(Pr)Icy Starlight

Ttttttttooooooodddaay................IIIII mmmmmeeeeaaaann toooonight, *pauses to blow furiously on fingers*...I went ouside for my first observational lab in my Astronomy course. I appologize for the wacky spelling, my fingers were a bit numb.

I'll provide you with the story.

I had the advantage--for such you could easily call it--of not being able to do the observation right away. Basically, a bunch of people who are taking this online class with me did the observational rather half-heartedly, or on a cloudy night, and my professor sent out an email warning us that we were expected to see more than three or four constellations! (He didn't put it so gently.) It behooved me to take note.

So tonight (and incidentally my father) found me practicing piano dilligently at about 8:15. Dad pointed out that the sky was clear and I shouldn't take my chances or sit on my duff (something I have done before). Sumarily he told me to make hay while the sun shines.

An aside: Sun shines? Truthfully? What is the world coming to? Something tragic, to be sure.

So I gathered a skymap that I'd printed off (here), a pencil and notebook, and booklight, a real flashlight, and a garbage bag-turned-desktop to protect my scientific studies from the snow.

I'll admit I was a bit queasy as I left the circle of light and the yard in favor of the open prairie/CRP where I could actually see the sky. It felt strange and alien to be outside of the protective windbreak of trees.

I crunched through and over the snow until I had a reasonable view of most of the sky. The snow was hard enough that my garbage bag did make a nice desktop. With the precision of a mad astronomist (astronomist sounds more mad than astronomer, agreed?) I arranged my notebook, pencil and skymap by the light of an LED flashlight stuck between my teeth.

The actual observing came by way of looking at the map with the light and then back at the sky while I muffled the light in my coat. The skymap, being such, has the directions reversed, so that facing north, east is to the left. It makes sense when held up against the backdrop of the stars, but that was difficult, and the light affected my night vision. The process ended up going something like this:

Locate a constellation on the map. Check the orientation of the constellation against the printed directions on the map. Close your eyes and try to re-orientate yourself to the sky. Lay down and look for the constellation, but only notice the few brightest stars. Sit up and look again at the skymap. *Lightbulb* Lay down and look at the sky. Pick out a few more of the stars in the constellation. Look at the skymap again. Oh, duh, those ones. Right there. Yep. I got it this time. Look back at the sky. Squint because you forgot to hide the light. Pick out a few more stars, enough to see the general shape of the constellation. Roll over and hold the light between your teeth as you try to write the name (usually borrowed from Greek and Roman mythology) with your mittins on.

Blow on your hands.

Start the whole process again.

It was a blast! I really did have a good time. I missed the Great Square of Pegasus, but I think that's because I got outside a little to late. Missed Jupiter too, but there was light pollution on the horizon where he was supposed to appear, so that wasn't my fault. Mom came out once I'd been out there a half-an-hour and we finished up together. I did find 13 constellations total.

I should mention the individual stars that I found too. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, was out and in his glory. He was a part of...something Major. Can't quite remember. And Polaris, the North Star, was twinkling from his position on the end of a jeweled dipper.

Here's a picture of stars taken from a camera with a shutter left open. It shows how the stars rotate through the night.