Stargazing: Triangulum, Andromeda, Aries (publ. 2024-10-04)

Date: 2024-10-03

Time: 10:15pm AKST

Location: Fairbanks, AK, USA (my yard)

Conditions: clear, but lots of twinkling

Last evening I stayed up just late enough to see the last half of astronomical twilight. I decided focus my sketch on the area of sky in between Perseus and Pegasus, which in my location put Aries near the horizon, and Andromedia toward the top of comfortable neck angles. I was not familiar with this slice of sky so I figured out what constellations I was looking at afterwards.

star sketch of sky toward the east, in between Perseus and Pegasus

Triangulum was a completely new constellation for me, so that was interesting. I had of course heard of Aries but had never observed it before. I had looked at the western half of Andromeda before (trying to find the galaxy) but had never paid any attention to the eastern stars.

I am interested in M33, the spiral galaxy in Triangulum. From what I was reading in my handbook, it is a fairly bright galaxy overall (total apparent magnitude) but the brightness is spread out so much that it is a difficult target. I asked Robert if he had a sketch of it, expecting his usual high-resolution, six-color masterpiece. But he had only one observation from a few years ago that was just a squiggly line on a page. I told him to get cracking on that or I'm going to pull my gold membership subscription.

Earlier in the evening, at the beginning of Nautical Twilight, I took the kids out again for a few minutes of stargazing — except the baby, who fortunately was asleep. I'd like to say we had some great observations and theological discussion, but actually within about 45 seconds they were riding around the yard on their bicycles and playing some kind of game involving spies. But they did point out the first few stars we saw popping out, including Lyra.

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