Stargazing 2024-11-09: Aries (publ. 2024-11-10)

The skies cleared up yesterday afternoon (2024-11-09) and in the evening the boys and I were able to go outside for stargazing and playtime. We got outside around 7:15pm AKST. I brought the sketching materials and binoculars and set them on my fold-out table, as usual.

Two stars in between Pegasus and Perseus were in a convenient viewing position, toward the south-east. Honestly, I had forgotten which constellation it was, and only identified it as Aries later after I got back inside.

Though Aries is a somewhat boring naked eye target (at least in the bright suburbs) it has plenty of interesting star patterns to sketch when using the binoculars. Here is my sketch, which as usual was done in pencil and then later re-done with colored pens.

sketch targeting Aries

Not realizing what I was getting into, I spent quite a while drawing that interesting chain of stars to the left of α. I recall seeing another interesting chain of stars somewhere — below γ, I think it was — but for sake of time I didn't pursue it.

After finishing my sketch, I surveyed around those stars again with the binoculars, trying to see any interesting colors. The only one that seemed markedly different than the usual blue-white was α, which had a definite reddish tint. I later read that it is a class K star, which means orange-red color.

For fun later, I looked at Aries in Celestia. I zoomed in on α Ari, and the program showed it having one planet orbiting it at 70k kilometers, bluish colored like Neptune. I imagine the color is pure guess work, or the default Celestia image, but anyway I suppose astronomers must think α Ari is a planet candidate.

The boys played outside for an hour or so, before getting tired and wanting to go inside. I went back inside about 15 minutes after them. We didn't have any deep spiritual conversations, but it was good for them to be out under the stars and also getting some exercise playing in the yard. I pointed out a few constellations to Micah with the laser pointer.

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