Ps. 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Sadly, January turned out to be about as bad as I feared, at least as far as stargazing is concerned. In general, the month was not too bad over all as far as temperatures and snowfall, but I think I could count the number of cloudless nights in January on 1 hand. Some beautifully clear days turned cloudy an hour or so before sunset several times last month and the few nights that were clear were way too cold and windy for this old stargazer to venture outside. I’m not very optimistic about our chances in February either but you just never know so it’s always a good idea to be prepared just in case! I think one of the things that got me hooked on amateur astronomy is the thrill that comes with discovering something. I’ll never forget that night in my front yard when I accidentally aimed my telescope at a bright yellowish star and to my utter amazement saw not a bright star in my little telescope, but the most amazing planet in our solar system: Saturn. Beautiful Saturn with it’s incredible rings. I still get goosebumps when I remember that night, almost 50 years ago, now. That accidental discovery was certainly memorable, but later, I felt it again as I began to learn my way around the night sky. You see, I had never really learned very many constellations. I knew the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. And I knew Orion, but that was about it. Just three constellations and to be more accurate, the Big Dipper is not really a constellation, it is what is known as an asterism. An asterism is a group of stars that is just a part of a larger constellation. In this case, the Big Dipper is just part of the constellation Ursa Major or “The Big Bear”. So I really only knew two constellations: the Little Dipper and Orion and one asterism, the Big Dipper. Well, I had just bought a new telescope (I was about 36 by this time) a Celestron C8. I decided to drive around town a little and look for places I could set it up that did not have as many trees and other obstacles as I had in my back yard. One nice dark night I drove to the east edge of town (Tama) and looked around. To my surprise, I spied something in the sky that I had never noticed before. It was a fuzzy, misty patch in an otherwise black and cloudless sky. What could it be? It was very obvious and I was certain that something so easy to see must be on the new planisphere star chart that I had recently bought. I went home, got out the planisphere and set it up for the current date and time and then held it up to the sky and there it was! I had discovered the Pleiades! That same feeling that I had had as an 11-year-old when I had discovered Saturn came flooding back. I can’t tell you how excited I was that I had found something in the sky and then was able to use my new planisphere to identify it. Suddenly, I made the connection of how big the sky was and how little my planisphere was and all those star patterns fell into place. With a good point of reference, I was soon identifying all the constellations and beginning to learn some of the names of the brighter stars. It was exhilarating. And it is something that continues to thrill me today when I search for something and am finally able to track it down, or even more fun, stumble across something in my telescope or my binoculars and then track it down and identify it. I hope you will find some of the same pleasure that I do when go out and recognize that that bright blazing star in the west this month is not really a star at all, but is actually the planet Venus. Venus will be visible between sunset and a little after nine p.m. Why not make the effort to go outside and see if you can ‘discover’ Venus for yourself? And while you are at it, see if you can also see reddish colored Mars not far away from Venus slightly higher and a little to Venus’s left. It is not nearly as bright as Venus, but it is brighter than any other star in the area. What a joy to be able to identify it and then confidently point it out to your friends and kids and grandkids! Jupiter rises in the east around 10 and my favorite planet Saturn comes up around 3 a.m. But don’t worry, they will be in prime position for viewing in the early evening this summer. In the meantime, put on your coat and hat and gloves and get out this month and start to make some astronomical discoveries of your own. See if you can find Taurus the Bull. I’ll give you some help next month, but see if you can look it up and find it on your own this month – you’ll love it, I promise! Clear Skies!