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Posting so I don't lose the blog.

4:45

Venus high in the south near sunset. Orion visible in the west around 6pm, strange because it was fairly light out, the nearly full moon was high and I was sitting at a stoplight surrounded by streetlights.

Saturday, January 3rd

Despite the crazy snow in Vancouver, I managed to see some planets while on Saltspring Island. Venus was nearly overhead and Jupiter and Mars were quite close together near the horizon. I wore my sunglasses at night while we were driving to the ferry so that my nightvision stayed on. It was amusing.

Saltspring has very few streetlights and is great for astronomy.

Happy New Year!

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. Canada is participating here and you can find your country here.

Maybe I will commemorate this with a telescope. :) Although for searching out nebulae and the Pleiades, the binocs totally rock. I won't be giving them up even when I get the telescope. (Costco dropped the price of theirs from $200 to $150...I desperately need to look up the stats on it and see if it might actually be worth buying.)

10:00-10:30

5:15 - naked eye viewing of tiny sliver of waxing crescent moon, about 10 degrees above my horizon, Venus about 50 degrees and Jupiter about 10 degrees. I could see the dark side of the moon a little because it was so close to sunset, but was on my way to Costco with no camera. :(

10:00-10:30 - I've been practicing with star charts in my copy of "The Backyard Astronomer's Guide" that I got from Dave's parents for Christmas, and a library copy of "Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe". Both of them are AWESOME.

Anyway. With my Opa's binoculars tonight, I saw:
-Orion (plus identified the stars Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Rigel within it)

-Sirius (a star in Canis Major...the light pollution was too bad for me to see the whole constellation

-Castor and Pollux (two stars in Gemini, again with the light pollution)

-what I think was part of Taurus (Aldebaran, the second major star in that constellation. Capella was directly overhead, which meant I would have had to look through my balcony roof and several others above me)

-a freaking NEBULA in the middle of Orion (it's just below his belt. I wonder if it has a crude nickname...*snicker*)

-the Pleiades, a cluster of seven stars, although I could only make out six for sure. These ones hurt my neck...they were very up, which is when I wish I had a lawn chair or an air mattress or something.

I think the coolest part is looking up and recognising shapes out of all the bits and bobs that are out there!!! I love Casseopeia, but she's in the north and I face south...she's one of the first constellations (not counting Dippers [which aren't actually true constellations!!] or Orion.) I ever identified, way before I was interested in astronomy.

I might've seen the Big Dipper, but it was partially blocked by buildings, but there seemed to be some stars in the right spots.

Yesterday: 420

Venus and Jupiter again. Further apart, Jupiter was a lot closer to the horizon.

Saw what I thought was Mercury (close to the horizon in the south) but it was just a plane. :P Hey, it was moving really slowly...didn't realize it was moving at first. Also, I'm not used to being able to see really far along the horizon and yeah. So there.

Mental note: need stronger binocs or a telescope soon. It's awesome to see the planets, but they don't look much different through the binocs I have.

4:45

It seems like Venus is a lot lower earlier in the evening. Jupiter is a lot further away from Venus and a lot lower too. They're off the horizon a lot earlier too.