Naked eye-fu late Monday night

by Jamie Dillon


Around 2 am Tuesday I'd just finished a fine book that'd kept me up, Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Leguin. Had read her Earthsea books some 30 yrs ago, just gave them to Liam, we're reading them in tandem and they're even better than I'd remembered.

So what happened was I looked out the bathroom window first and it looked like there were stars out there! Hadn't seen them in days. What was that bright star front and center?

Waltzed outside and whoa it was Altair! The Summer Triangle had moved along within the week! It was a 5th magnitude sky easy, all kinds of stars in Corona Borealis and Hercules and Ophiuchus shining up there. And Mars was huge, bright and red. Even though it's gone retro, it'd made a net move to the East since I'd seen it last. Left Scorpius and moved into Sagittarius. For a bonus, saw the Teapot over the neighbor's roof for the first time this year.

Serpens all around the Serpent Bearer; over to Ursa Minor, Draco was winding around. All those stars. 3 years ago that was all more than satisfying; now there's the whole draw of all the hidden treasures sitting right there.

On that note, figure on having more telescopic stuff to go on about after Cone Peak Saturday.