The first resource I chose was skyandtelescope.org. Sky and Telescope publishes new content every Friday. This site always keeps it’s readers up to date on celestial events, provides sky maps, pod casts, and stargazing basics with tips. For this module specifically, Sky and Telescope can help me find different star patterns and understand the basics of star gazing. The article posted most recently on this website provides details of the sky this week, starting Friday August 27th to Saturday September 4th. Tonight, August 29th, there is a description of the last quarter moon of this month, which shifts on August 30th.
The second website I chose to investigate was stellarium.org. This site shows a realistic, telescope-like 3D picture view of the night sky. Some features included on Stellarium are catalogs of stars, deep-sky objects, constellations, nebulae, and more. This website is very fun and fascinating, I actually got really excited searching through it. The features that I found the most interesting on this website were the visualization features such as star twinkling, iridium flares stimulation, tails of comets, and the 3D sceneries. I am still trying to figure out how to use the site when it comes to finding how it shows specific parts of the sky relating to location and time, but I can say that simply looking at the setup they have is amazing.
My family actually owns a telescope that we never use, so I am unsure of the quality. I really wish that I could have gone out this week to search through the star but, unfortunately, there has been nothing but very cloudy rainy weather and I have not had a chance to finish this part of the assignment, visually speaking. I can say that any time I go out to enjoy the night sky I always look for the big and little dipper. It is something I have loved since I was little. One cool thing I can say is that I have a pattern of freckles across my shoulder and down my arm that is shaped very similarly to that of the big dipper, which may or may not be interesting to some of you. I am honestly just trying to write something sky related that I find interesting or love about the stars, since there is not much I can do about the weather and lack of opportunities to observe.
