Are You A Stargazer?

Do you ever look at the night sky and wonder if those reddish blue lights are stars or planets? Ever want to know what Taurus or Leo or Pisces looks like?  There's a great free program called Stellarium which shows you planets, stars, constellations, asteroids, and everything else in the sky at that exact moment.

In fact, this week just before sunrise, there are four planets grouped very close together looking toward the east.  I got up early Friday to see this, and was amazed at how bright Jupiter was and how red Mars is.

If you do download the program, the first thing you do is go to location on the left side and type in Saipan. 

After that, the sky you see on Stellarium will be the exact sky you see when you look into the real sky; any night, any day, the program and the sky will match.

It's not a program you'll use everyday, but sometimes you see something at night and might wonder what it is. Now you can load up Stellarium and know exactly what that object is.

Finally, there are quite a few events coming to the sky in the next few months which are very rare, once-in-a-life kind of events. Planet alignments, eclipses, asteroids coming close to earth and others. With Stellarium, you'll know what's going on.

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