D & Dv really enjoy looking at the stars in our almost-lightless night sky. We ask the neighbors to turn out their outside lights and the viewing is fantastic. Each of them have star logs and draw what they see in the stars through the telescope or our binoculars. We look at the moon, the nebulas, constellations, and anything else that looks interesting. Lately, they’ve been just pointing to a star and wanting to see it through the telescope. Yikes! For an amature astronomer, it’s hard to find those little bitty twinkles of light so they can see them up close!
The other night, our first clear night in a long time, Dv came racing out to the shop to find me. “We can see the stars, Aunt Jay! We can see them! They’re out tonight! There’s no clouds!” He was so excited because I told him that the next night we had where there weren’t any clouds, we’d get the scope out and they could look at the stars. So. First, we looked at the Orion nebulas, then they wanted to see Sirius and Polaris. Then we just picked stars at random to see. It was fun.
I am planning an Astronimagination Tour for our next clear night sky, and we’ll have a few guests over. D & Dv will be able to show off what they know, show off their log books, and just enjoy their company while we eat dinner outside on the deck and look at the sky.
I use several different programs to make sure I’m looking at the right things up there, but first and foremost is a program that recently (in 2005) went with GPL licensing and is a free download. It’s Stellarium and it’s wonderful. The only thing more that I could wish for in this program is a red-screen so we don’t loose our night vision. But, you know, it’s just awesome and sometimes you just have to commit things to memory so you can guide others. 