Atlas of the Universe

As a nice diversion, I spent several hours last night reading several astronomy websites.

I found a great little gem of a site at Sky Maps, which posts a downloadable star chart for the northern hemisphere at 40 degrees latitude (I'm at 35 deg N) every month for free. The March star chart revealed that six of the 10 brightest stars in the heavens are all out this month: Sirius, Arcturus, Capella, Rigel, Procyon and Betelgeuse.

Unfortunately, it was cloudy last night, so I couldn't go outside with my compass and find a few of these. I hope to do so sometime over the next two weeks-- my specific goal is to try to locate the Andromeda Galaxy, which, at 2.5 million light years, is the most distant light in the skies that is viewable with the naked eye (I'll use binoculars).

Ideally, I'd love to spend an hour some evening this summer up in Linville with Mack's telescope, and show my sons some of these stars.

Lastly, this is an awesome pictorial representation of the universe.