Star light, star bright. . .

I love looking at the stars, but I am not great at identifying most constellations. There is one that I can almost always find, though. That was a bad thing, years ago, but now I always have to smile when I see "my" constellation.

I am very interested in outer space in general. That's a good thing, living here in Rocket City - there's a big emphasis on space here. Occasionally they will announce something on our news like a meteor shower, or a time the International Space Station will be visible, and so we'll run outside to peer into the sky to try to see whatever it is. I recently discovered a neat site that forecasts space weather, and I find it completely fascinating.

We can see the stars fairly well from our yard. Certainly much better than you can in most larger cities. We were a bit spoiled by living in Tucson, though. There is a fairly major observatory on a mountain overlooking Tucson, and so the entire city kept it's lights dim at night. It was sort of shocking at first - it seems so dark there. We did eventually get used to it, and we loved being able to see the stars so clearly. During the summer they would set up a telescope at the Desert Museum and we enjoyed being able to see the rings of Saturn and other details much more clearly than we ever could when we were growing up in Tennessee. We have a telescope now, though we rarely use it. I would like to start using it more often - I think The Kidd would really enjoy it.

When I was growing up, the only constellations I really knew about were the Big and Little Dippers. When I got to high school I learned more about the different constellations in physics class, and at the end of the unit about outer space we had to do a photography project. I still remember the assignment. To get full credit, we had to work with a partner to take pictures of the following: The circumpolar constellations, the moon rising, and any ten constellations (which we had to identify).

It was freezing the night that my then-boyfriend Fred and I set out to take all of the pictures we needed. We had to wait for a clear night, of course, and in Tennessee the clearest nights are always the coldest. We had an old camera that my dad had picked up while he was in Vietnam - we couldn't use just any camera, because we had to be able to control the shutter speed. We set the camera up on a tripod and tried to use the attachment that allowed us to take pictures without shaking the camera - but it promptly broke. We spent what seemed like forever soldering it back together and then started taking our pictures.

We did the moon first - we had to take multiple exposures in the same frame to show the moon rising over the course of the evening. Next we did the circumpolar constellations. Finally we started taking pictures of every constellation we could see. We were freaking out by this time, because it had gotten really late and we had reserved the darkroom for the next day so we had to finish the project, no matter what. By the end we were frantically taking random pictures of the sky. We were sure that between all of the pictures we had taken we would easily have far more than ten good shots of different constellations that we could identify.

The next day we went to the darkroom to develop our pictures. Neither of us had ever used a darkroom before and I was horribly afraid that we would somehow ruin our film, but it went surprisingly well. We had planned to only develop the pictures we needed for the assignment but we ended up doing them all. When the picture were finally ready we went home to identify them and choose the ones to turn in. The moon picture turned out great, and so did the one of the Circumpolar Constellations circling just above the horizon. We also had several great shots of Fred's dog, Foxxy. Plus one picture of the two of us that I didn't even remember taking and one picture of Fred's dad.

All the rest were constellations. We identified the first one quickly - it was Cassiopeia. The next one was, too. The third one was harder to figure out - until we turned it sideways and realized it was also Cassiopeia. I still remember taking the pictures . . . we took pictures in every direction, of every part of the sky we could see. I still can't understand how it happened, but every single constellation picture was of Cassiopeia. We didn't get one picture of any other constellation except the ones in the shot of the Circumpolar Constellations, and since that picture was of them in motion it was worthless as a specific constellation shot.

Fortunately we weren't the only ones who had that problem, though we were the only people who got Cassiopeia. There was a booming black market trade in pictures at school the next day. Thanks to lots of trades we ended up with all the pictures we needed, and if our instructor ever noticed that everyone seemed to have the same pictures of some of the constellations she never said anything about it.

These days the only constellation that I can always find and identify is Cassiopeia. If she's visible at all, I see her almost as soon as I step outside. It irritated me at first that I couldn't seem to remember all the other constellations. Even the ones I can identify on paper or in pictures I can't always find in the sky, but I know that I can almost always count on seeing Cassiopeia if I look up into the night sky.