Stargazing 101

Last evening, Diane and I drove to a suburban parking lot that happens to have expansive horizons and moderate light pollution. We hoped to sit for a while and watch for meteors after the sky began to darken.

The sky was clear when we left the house, and on the way we decided to buy a couple of the new electric fan type of mosquito repellent devices. By the time we arrived at the park, Venus, Arcturus, Spica, Saturn, and Mars were obvious. A close look further west revealed Mercury to be a naked eye object just above the treetops.

The placement of Mars, Saturn, and Venus is quite pleasing now. Diane mistook the Mars-Saturn pair as Gemini. Its been so long since we have been out in the summer sky at sunset that I hardly blame her for mistaking the planet pair for a constellation that set well before sunset.

We had a few moments of fun trying to decide if we could tell Mars from Saturn by the color difference. We both decided ("final answer") that the lower of the pair was reddish and therefore had to be Mars. We were correct. Its color was also very similar to Antares in the Southeast at the focus of the Scorpius triplet.

Very high cumulus moved in from the West as the sky became darker, reflecting the light pollution of San Antonio and making the sky less than ideal for meteor watching.

The experiment with the mosquito repellent devices was a failure, for lack of bugs. It must be one of life's unwritten rules that when we buy an electronic repellent for bugs, the buzzing mosquitoes suddenly quit bothering us. Its probably just a special application of a broader lesson we have seen before.

After enjoying the light breeze and moderate temperature of the evening for a spell, we put the chairs back in the truck and headed back to our house - more enriched with our time together than we would have been with another hour behind our computers or in front of our TV.