"We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -Oscar Wilde


One of my favorite parts of our trip last week was the sky.
Every night we had an enormous, cloudless desert sky, and boy, was I glad I'd remembered to bring my star book at the last minute.
I learned to identify about 15 new constellations, on top of the 5 or so I already knew.
considering that there are only 88, and about half of those are visible at one time, I think that's pretty good.
the last night it got very cloudy, and lessons were over.
We also saw Saturn!
very exciting. K was the first to spot the rings in the binoculars. I just thought it was blurry, but when I looked again, I did see it.
along with two of its moons!
There's a very pretty star cluster in Cancer called M44-
and another, smaller one in Coma Berenices.


here's my little list:
I may need the book to pick a few of these out again, and a few of these I sort of knew before.
Casseopeia
Cepheus
Perseus
Lepus
Auriga
Draco
Hydra
Virgo
Cancer
Gemini
Leo
Taurus
Hercules
Corvus
Crater
Coma Berenices
Canis Major
Canis Minor
Boötes
Corona Borealis
Leo Minor
Sextans
Camelopardalis

Good grief, if you surf the internet long enough, you might actually learn something useful.
Apparently the Big Dipper is not a constellation at all, but an asterism, which "are sub- or supersets of constellations which build a constellation itself, or a group of stars, physically related or not. Best known is the Big Dipper as a part of the Great Bear."