I must recommend this piece of software.
It’s well past my bedtime and I couldn’t sleep so I got up and spent some time looking out of the window. Whilst there’s quite a lot of light pollution here thanks to Stellarium I was able to find out what I was looking at.
I started with some lovely, low and bright stars like Rigil Kent, Mimosa and Acrux. Parts of the Centaurus and Crux constellations.
Then much to my excitement (expressed internally) - I followed the Corvus constellation and the star Spica (part of Virgo) to see Saturn.
Wow! I love looking at the stars. It makes me feel so small. Saturn is quite close at over 814 million miles. Rigil Kent was a meagre 4.39 light years (that’s 2.5x10^13 miles!!!) and Spica is 262 light years away (you can do the maths for that one) which means the light I’m looking at left that star in 1748. Around the time that Leonhard Euler published “Introductio in analysin infinitorum” that year. How marvellously fitting.
Knowing what I’m looking at in the night sky is a skill I’d really like. I have a romantic vision of being able to tell my children about the stars with the hope that they’d be as much in awe of God’s creation as I am. For that to be a reality then (amongst other things) I need to keep star gazing.
