It was pretty rare to stare up at a dark sky full of sparkly stars while growing up between streetlights and neon pizza signs.
Now if we went camping or up to a friend’s cottage, that was a different story. That’s when we could zip open our tent or lie on the dock and just gaze up at the twinkly beauty above us all. We’d just tilt our necks, drop our jaws, and wonder how big it was, how far it went, and what the tentacled, saliva-covered aliens looking back at us were thinking.
It didn’t happen too often, but every once in a while somebody would pick out a few bright stars and point out a constellation way up there. Light years away, worlds apart, and sparkling for all eternity, we heard stories about bulls, belt buckles, and the personal business of many Greek Gods.
Of course, I could only ever see one thing up there myself: The Big Dipper aka The Plough. Sometimes I thought I’d see another one only to have an older kid tell me I was looking at a plane, a blinking satellite or, occasionally, the moon.
That’s why when you actually point out a constellation in outer space you feel like a genius astro-cosmologist with a PhD in Good Eyesight. You’re no longer the dude responsible for finding marshmallow roasting sticks, grabbing bug spray from the tent, or dumping a pail of water onto the campfire before we head to bed. No, now you’re a worldly space explorer raising your eyebrows and pointing out the window as we all fly forward through the darkness.
AWESOME!
Photos from: here
Illustration from: here
25 Comments
August 20, 2009 at 12:21 am
Yay I’m the first to comment! I love stargazing!
August 20, 2009 at 1:17 am
Me too. Fortunately, trying to find the little dipper has more applications than navigation.
August 20, 2009 at 3:57 am
This is my favourite awesome thing so far, although that’s a redundant thing to say because it’ll be untrue tomorrow! Nevertheless, one of the most well written for sure.
August 20, 2009 at 6:04 am
The village my mum and dad have their house in in England has few streetlights, so you can always see the stars if it’s a clear sky.
I don’t recognise anything aside from the Plough, but it can be quite stunning.
April 23, 2010 at 11:34 am
If you can learn one or two more than Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and Orion, you look REALLY knowledgeable.
I usually can point out Cassiopeia. Its a W, kinda. Even if you can’t fully see something, you can always fake it, so long as nobody else in your group knows constellations.
August 20, 2009 at 8:38 am
Definitely one of the most awesome awesome things so far!
August 20, 2009 at 9:43 am
This past weekend we were at a friend’s cottage and our friend pointed out Saturn. That was pretty cool.
August 20, 2009 at 10:00 am
I think he was making that up
August 20, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I wasn’t even there, but I’m pretty sure that he was probably making that up.
August 20, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Not necessarily made up, you can see Saturn without a telescope, but it isn’t very bright.
August 20, 2009 at 11:23 am
You have to live near a low light area to see a lot of them.
August 20, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Definitely an awesome thing. The more “complex” the constellation is, the better! It makes you feel amazing to be able to point out something other than the big dipper or orion’s belt although that’s cool too.
August 20, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Very awesome…even awesomer is when your six year old niece points out constellations you’ve never heard of like the “Giant Spork” (akin to the Big Dipper apparently). It is up there…she insists she can see it!
August 20, 2009 at 10:06 pm
All my boys (4) when they were young believed my outlandish names for the constellations when we went up to northern Wisconsin.
The “giant snake thingy”, the “slanted twinkie” (orions belt), and their favorite; the “seven headed dunklinker”. I think I scarred them for life.
They thought it was ….awesome.
August 22, 2009 at 11:29 am
i’ve seen the little dipper, orion, and a planet (not sure which one). it was awesome.
August 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm
That is awesome! I remember when I first spotted Orion. It was one of the best days of my life!
August 26, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Pointing out stars, planets and constellations is easy with a green laser pointer, and they’re getting cheaper and cheaper on the internet. You can see the beam going out into space, or at least half a mile away in the dark. If you have a decent pair of binoculars, you can see four moons of Jupiter.
November 16, 2009 at 12:03 am
I love my green star pointer!
November 8, 2009 at 1:51 am
Ah, I love space…. and I’ve always wanted to go camping….
it’s strange thinking of what is out there, including the things we cannot see, such as radio waves.
November 15, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I did that once with Cassiopeia. It was, indeed, awesome.
November 16, 2009 at 12:06 am
I once spent hours on the interwebs learning about constellations before going out to watch a meteor shower with my friends just so I could be that guy.
December 4, 2009 at 12:52 pm
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April 30, 2010 at 7:26 am
Besides the Big Dipper I also find Orion’s Belt pretty often.
July 15, 2010 at 12:38 am
I love doing this! I failed at it when in the Northern Hemisphere though. No crux to orient myself with.
August 23, 2010 at 1:06 am
While vacationing in the mountains when I was 7, my parents bought me a pocket-sized book all about start and stargazing. I loved it so much I must have read through it a few dozen times. Strangely, even though I could talk for hours about astronomy to this day, I can only remember and point out about half a dozen constellations.