Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Monday, October 16, 2006
Holy Cow! The Milky Way!
Just saw something over the weekend that I'd never seen before - the Milky Way. Friday night was very clear, the clearest night we've had so far at the new house. After dinner, I wondered how many more stars were visible than in the suburbs. Quite a lot, as it turned out! At first I couldn't find any familiar constellations because there were too many stars, but directly overhead was a luminous streak. I guessed right away what it was. Eventually I picked out the tail of Cygnus and all of Cassiopeia. Because of all the trees, we only get to view a slice of the sky, but this picture neatly illustrates the slice we saw (of course we didn't see nearly that much detail).
6 Comments:
The Milky Way - now I'm jealous!
Ohhhhh Annie, I wasn't trying to make anybody jealous! I was just so excited to be able to go outside and see that many stars. Next time I'm taking a star chart and hope to get a better idea of what I'm looking at.
yup. that would be one of the things for which I'm willing to give up a lot of other stuff. to be able to see the stars in the sky makes all my problems seem very small indeed!
yup. that would be one of the things I am willing to give up a lot of other things to be able to enjoy. we've had a lot of cloud cover and rain lately, but those stars of my country home's night sky make my problems seem very small indeed!
Kati, that's exactly how I feel. You've reminded me of the Eames film Powers of 10, and the Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field pictures. Perspective is everything...
The skies in South Dakota and the Big Bend area had the starriest skies we'd ever seen. We can see more from Austin than we could in Chicago, but found a wonderful sky view south of San Antonio. A lucky exit took us to a turnaround with no town lights, just fields, and we were overwhelmed once again.
Annie
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