Saturday Feb 14,09 Day 7
Happy Valentines Day
Or as my eldest daughter says “Fuzzy pink commercial paper day”. She isn’t a fan :-)
I am on galley today with Gary and Rich.
As I was going off watch at 8:00 last night I had a couple of astronomical revelations. For nearly 3 weeks
I have been looking at the stars when I could trying to identify the fixed navigation ones so called because
they are bright enough to be seen at dusk and dawn when the horizon is also visible. This is called
“Nautical Twilight” and is slightly different than “Civil Twilight” which is defined as when the center of
the Sun is 6 degrees below the horizon.
So I was looking at the Southern Cross and noticed two bright stars to the East of it. Looking them up on a
star map I got their names. The brightest one is Rigel Kentaurus the other one is Hadar. OK so far so good
moving on… Then Ben tells me that Rigel Kentaurus is also known as…wait for it…
ALPHA CENTAURI! Boo Yeah! There is a name to conjure with, being raised an avid reader of early science fiction :-)
The next cool thing was that I finally identified the Large Magellanic Cloud. Not quite sure how I missed
that before but once I knew that I should be able to see it there it was. The other thing I would have liked
to see would be Sagittarius but he is below the horizon at this time of year. That is where the center of our
Galaxy is.
Thanks for reading.
KJ
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