Astronomy & Space

Now that the weather is not so cold at night I am more apt to spend some time outdoors stargazing. Tonight my son joined me. He just finished a unit on astronomy in school, and it has resparked his interest in the subject. I couldn't be happier!

Tonight we were able to see Mercury before it set. Because it follows the sun's track, it is low in the sky in the last place to get dark. Fortunately you can see it before it gets completely dark and disappears below the horizon. To the upper right we caught the star Capella in Mercury.

Tonight Mars, Pollux, and Castor are lined up from left to right. We saw them and Betelgeuse below in Orion plus Procyon in Canis Minor and our brightest star, Sirius, in Canis Major. Overhead and toward the south we saw yellowish-white Saturn appear next to Regulus before the rest of the stars of Leo filled in. Straight up was the Big Dipper, and then we ventured into our backyard to look east, where the handle of the Big Dipper arced to bright and reddish Arcturus in Bootes and then we sped on down to Spica in Virgo.

The last item we saw was Vega rising in the northeast before I had to hustle him up to bed. And it turned out that Vega was the most exciting thing to him. "I saw one of the stars in the Summer Triangle!" he exclaimed. Which, of course, means that summer is on its way, with more warm days to play outside, more warm nights to stargaze, and best of all for my son, no more school. He couldn't be happier.