Ursa Major- The Big Dipper

May 20, 2012


The big day came with disappointment. There was no eclipse to be sighted anywhere near my home. I should have driven my sleepy behind to Lubbock. I had to get over it because I still had to take my notorious evening nap before work. Then I realized I had not done any real stargazing at all. I had done all this research and I got books and equipment, but the beauty was in the skies not in the research and equipment. I grabbed my new binoculars and headed out to the back yard at the first sign of darkness. I sat on my outdoor L.L. Bean Camp Comfort recliner that I had set on the grass. I looked up and sat quietly watching the stars with "the unaided eye" first as I wanted to know what I could see with no equipment. It was a beautiful sight. Everything was silent and I caught one light after another of stars that had been following up above everywhere...everywhere I had ever been, night after night, and never acknowledged by my two blinkers. I mean I cannot even tell you the last time I had sat out at night and looked at this beauty. I just sat there for a few minutes and took it all in and I realized you really had to look because a lot of the stars cannot be seen at a glance, you had to give them a minute. Then I remembered reading about star clusters and there being so many I was hoping to eventually learn to recognize all of them. So I set out to find my first star cluster. 


My newly recruited assistant was my eight year old daughter Jenny. She had been sitting with me the whole time, quiet as a well fed mouse, but then she squealed, "there's the big dipper!

Human ear like cluster

I looked at what was for sure our first sighting of a cluster, but I was not sure yet if it was what she said it was. I had my pen and paper ready to sketch out my first cluster since my camera battery had not yet arrived (long story, too upset to tell it). At first sighting it looked a bit like a human ear.

My big dipper

After a few more minutes of focusing on the whole cluster together, still with the unaided eye, I saw it. It WAS the big dipper. I drew it the way I saw it after a few minutes, and the excitement between Jenny and myself was so great, it was as if we had landed on the moon. For me this was a wonderful discovery for the day and, eclipse forgotten, I marched my victory sketch back inside. We had found our first official personally sighted cluster, Ursa Major-The big dipper.
We had not even used the binoculars.