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15 July
Tonight, I went up to the roof for the first time. There are some other good locations that come to mind,
but this one seemed to be the easiest to get to, a place I could comfortably reach every night. The
building custodian did give me a strange look when I told him I want to go up on the roof. I
contemplated wither it would be better to admit the truth, or perhaps he would be less dubious if I made
up a tale of wild sexual perversion on top of his building. Fortunately, he just silently handed me the
key, and about nine o'clock I was standing on the roof.
Finding the Big Dipper was no problem so I decided to concentrate on it. The first thing to check out was the double star, Mizar. It is located at the end of the handle and very close to it I was just able to its companion, Alcor. It’s amazing that I never noticed before that there are really two stars there.
According to the chart, one finds Polaris by using the Big Dipper as a pointer. As per instructions, I found the two pointer stars of the Dipper, ran my eyes through them and found myself starting at a very black part of the sky. True, there was one star in the area and it seemed to be placed due north. I’m just not quite sure that it was Polaris. That seemed to be just about enough for the first night, so after another look at the Big Dipper, I climbed down off the room.
16 July
I picked up the key from the ever-dubious custodian and was up on the roof again by nine. The first
thing to do was to take another look at the Big Dipper. Since the Big Dipper is also known as the Great
Bear, tonight I tried to find the bear’s feet. The bright stars that I saw last night make up the bear’s body
and tail. At first, the constellation appeared exactly as I remembered it. Then after ten minutes or so,
some faint stars began to appear. The bear has feet, two of them. The end of each foot splits into two
long toes. How could I fail to see them before?
Now comes the time to turn to another constellation. The tail of the Big Dipper more or less points to a bright star. There was obviously something special about the star. It was brighter than the stars of the Big Dipper, while at the same time it wasn’t really white. The star’s color seemed to hover halfway between yellow and orange. According to the chart, the star was Arcturus of the constellation Bootes. Once I knew where Arcturus was located, finding the rest of Bootes was simple. Well, almost simple. I kept looking on the wrong side of Arcturus for the rest of the constellation. When I tried the other side, everything fell into place and the sky matched the chart. I now have two nice constellations under my belt. Unfortunately they are both high in the sky so my aching neck forced me off the roof.
17 July
Tonight I went up to the roof a bit early, at half past eight. Both the Big Dipper and Bootes were higher
in the sky than usual. I decided that it was a good night to for Hercules. On the chart, Hercules
appears as two trapezoids attached by their sides. The trapezoids just didn’t seem to be overhead. I'm
sure that I was looking at the right spot, although all the stars were dim and insignificant. Try as I
might, I couldn't find any patterns. After a long while, finally a lop-sided square began to appear. I
stood on the roof with my craned upwards for a good half-hour, trying to make out the rest of Hercules.
In my opinion, Hercules deserves a better constellation than this decrepit bunch of stars. The longer I
looked upwards, the more frustrated I became and the more I noticed a very definite pain in the back of
my neck. I dejectedly climbed down from the roof.
18 July
Last night was not only frustrating, but my neck hurt the entire following day. When I went up onto the
roof tonight, I brought an air mattress. I lay down on it and the stars near the zenith were easy to see. It
was so comfortable that I took my time and leisurely swept my eyes past the Big Dipper Bootes and
finally Hercules. Tonight, there were two trapezoids with one contiguous side, while strings of stars
streamed out from the outer point of the trapezoids. I spotted most of the stars of Hercules, if not every
single one. Then I noticed a very bright star close by, almost touching a parallelogram of dimmer stars.
The star was Vega and it and the accompanying parallelogram make up the constellation Lyra.
That was
a nice and easy one. So was the next constellation – Cygnus. It appeared as a large cross fairly low in the
sky. It was fine night so I spent a few more minutes lying on my mattress gazing at Lyra and Cygnus.
Finally, I proceeded to the trap door on the roof and found that it was locked. After ten minutes of frantic
knocking, the custodian came, unlocked the door, took a long look at my mattress and asked what the
hell I was doing on the roof. I blurted out that I was looking at the stars. A broad smile spread over his
face. It turned out that twenty years ago he was a sailor in the Merchant Marine and
knew the sky very well. We spent a very pleasant half-hour together pointing out constellations to each other.
22 July
This has been the worst spell of summer weather in the last fifteen years. It hasn’t stopped raining for
almost three days. It finally let up tonight. Even though the sky was still overcast, I went up on the
roof just to see if everything in the sky was still where I left it. Occasionally the clouds would break for
a few minutes. The funny thing was that whenever a hole in the clouds would appear, the sky above the
appeared crystal clear. I caught glimpses of the backside of the Big Dipper and saw Lyra for a few
seconds. I decided to call it quits when it started to drizzle again.
24 July
The sky finally cleared completely. It was such a clear night that I decided to take a drive to a hilltop
outside of town that I discovered a week or so ago. It's just a little knoll, bare of trees and mercifully
far from any electric lights. There was striking difference between the view form there and the roof.
The dim stars of the Big Dipper were easily seen. I quickly went through all the constellations that I
already knew – the Big Dipper, Bootes, Hercules, Lyra and Cygnus. I found Polaris and saw that it
was really part of the Little Dipper. The scoop of the Little Dipper appeared a bit mangled in
comparison to its big brother.
I then turned towards the south. Because of a tall building next door too mine, I have never been able to get a good look at the southern horizon from the roof. From my hilltop, I had a clear view of the entire horizon. Close to the southern horizon was a giant "S". There was no mistaking it for anything except the constellation Scorpio. Its top and middle both consisted of a line of three stars while its tail was a smooth curve just clearing the horizon. Although almost all of Scorpio’s stars were bright, Antares – a red giant – easily outshined them in the middle.
It was perfect night, but for one small detail: I forgot to bring my binoculars. Hopefully, the good weather will hold up for another few days.
27 July
I finally made it back to my hilltop again, this time with binoculars. I spent the first few minutes
looking at the sky through them, more or less at random. The sky was teeming with stars invisible to
the unaided eye. I then pointed my binoculars towards the Milky Way. As cluttered as the other
sections of the sky appeared before, they were barren compared to the Milky Way which appeared as an
explosion of fine white power. I stared at the swarms above me for some time and directed my
attention to Sagittarius, to the left of Scorpio, first without and then with binoculars. I expected to see
a huge number stars as Sagittarius is located in the Milky Way, according to the chart. I didn’t expect
to see clouds. They weren't cloud as much as murky patches. I though at first that my binoculars were
not focused, so I played around with them, but nothing helped to remove the fuzziness. No matter what
I did, small white smudges remained squatting among the stars of Sagittarius.
My only problem tonight was that there were too many stars. The constellations were caged in by their neighboring stars, which made them difficult to pick out. I tried to find some other constellations and then drove home.
28 July
My dog decided to have conversation with one of his neighborhood friends, a Saint Bernard I think,
about four in the morning. After getting out of bed to quiet him down, I decided to peek out the kitchen
window. Nothing seemed familiar at first. It's a small window facing east and doesn't provide a very
wide view. Then, just peeking over some building, I saw Orion. It was large, very bright and there was
no mistaking it for anything else. The star Rigel really is blue. Orion was so beautiful and I was
already out of bed anyway, so I decided to stay up a little and enjoy. I pulled over a chair to make
myself comfortable, poured out a glass of Riesling (I think Orion goes well with a nice semi-dry wine) and
continued to watch Orion climb slowly through the sky.