Observation Hours

Last night, April 26, I was outside for quite a few hours: from nine to two in the morning in Sarasota. Random, yes. Helpful, also yes. It was amazing because while lying outside I saw no less than six separate satellites going in all different directions. It was cool because they all looked like at some point they would have to cross paths with each other which naturally means they would crash, violently. Obviously this didn't happen because they are at different distances from the Earth. Thinking about this got me to think about that nifty little fact with the grain of sand- if you hold a grain of sand at arms length it covers in the sky approximately 3,000 galaxies. This fact then became even more awesome when we actually ended up at Siesta Key beach by midnight, and held up grains of sand. Very conceptual and extremely mind-blowing. The best part was probably Michael Everingham freaking out about not being able to pick up just one grain though... Back to astronomy. In the west in the early night I saw Orion easily with Rigel and Betelgeuse, and next to it was Canis Major. I like that because, since they are so easily identifiable, I could watch their slow descent towards the horizon and past the treeline. Katie McPartland and I picked out Arcturus towards the north, Sirius, Spica, Saturn, Mars, Venus and even Hydra's head which was interesting because I had never seen it before. Spica and Saturn were much closer to each other than I had expected. Throughout the course of the night we both saw meteorites, at least one each, and oddly enough were able to recognize the summer triangle! Did not see that coming. But we did, starting with Vega in Lyra, and leading down to the Northern Cross in Cygnus and Altair.