Friday, April 20, 2007

A Night to Remember

Pin It Now! Wow! Last night I saw Venus in the sky!!

As many know I have deeply loved teaching astronomy this year to Mullin and Lincoln. (Shiloh loves it too, she calls every sphere, "mooooon".)

After having finished our lessons on planets, we have now begun our journey to the stars. Lately Mullin and I have been gazing at the sky trying to find stars/constellations that we have read about. Goodness gracious, it is a bit harder than I thought! My ignorance will just have to be overlooked and blamed on the public school system.

Anyway, this past Monday night Mullin and I were driving home from a church meeting, and we both noticed this amazingly bright "star" in the sky. We were trying to figure out which one it could be and to what constellation it belonged, but failed. I kept thinking, "It's not twinkling like stars usually do."

On Thursday morning I awoke before the sun did, so I decided to look out the window. And there it was again, that beautiful, bright Morning Star. I just knew it had to be a planet. I forgot about it and went about the rest of my day as usual. Our astronomy lesson on this day happened to cover the Orion constellation.

Thursday night as I was finishing up tucking Shiloh, Heartsong, and Lovey into bed, I heard the three boys (Mark, Mullin and Lincoln) talking about that big, bright star. It could be seen perfectly from the boys' bedroom window. Mark said he thought he saw it twinkle, but Mullin and I stuck to our guns and said that it was not twinkling!! After I left Shiloh's room, Mullin exclaimed that he could see Orion, but of course I just thought he was saying that because we had learned about it earlier that day. Sure enough, when I peeked through the blinds, there stood Orion ready for battle! And right next to him was his faithful dog, Sirius. How's that for ending our science lesson for the day!

After all the kids had been tucked in for the night I wanted to settle the bright star issue once and for all, so I went to this science website and found out indeed that Venus was the star we'd been tracking for the past few days. It was nestled right between the crescent moon and the arms of Orion! I hurried to get the telescope, for I had never seen a planet through one before. I must say I was completely awestruck! It was so cool to see Venus as a round ball with texture and not a bright star. Mark and I went and got Mullin right away so he could see this amazing sight, and I am glad we did because it is cloudy today.

I may have brought some to tears of boredom with this post, but for me this experience was truly remarkable!

I will definitely be sky gazing on April 24th since Jupiter will be making herself known!

2 comments:

not up to code said...

Have you found Mars yet? We can see it even in the city. Look for a bright, slightly red light that doesn't twinkle.

HONEY said...

Do you ever go to the hubble telescope website? Very cool photos there!

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