Tuesday, November 29, 2005

If I can be sirius for a moment...

I don't know why, but I spend a lot of time looking up at the sky these days. It helps pass the long nights, I guess.

So, last week, I think on Tuesday, as I was walking back from the hospital, I did my usual stop'n'stare into the sky from the Bow valley's edge. It was about 4:15 a.m., so Orion had swung off to the west, giving me yet another picture of the sky above my neighbourhood. I noticed a star, incredibly bright, in a nice constellation that just jumped out at me. I didn't know what it was, so when I got home, I looked it up in my little book of stars. It turned out that it was Sirius, and the constellation was canis major. All these years, naturally I had heard of Sirius (a.k.a. the dog star), but had never bothered to actually look for it, and it had never jumped out at me before.

Anyways, I hope we get a bit of aurora borealis action going over the winter. I have a need for entertainment.

5 comments:

Bil The Man said...

I thought this was going to be an ad for Howard Stern.

Tall Medstudent said...

I had forgotten about that guy's existence...

Anonymous said...

My first thought was that you were talking about Harry Potter. Anyway, as a kid I was always told that sirius is the brightest star in the sky, but i never figured out which one that is. And venus is always so bright whenever i look up. OH yeah, the best stary night i saw was in the Sierra Nevada mountains at 12,000 ft. You can really see the Milky Way like a sparkling river traversing through the sky. The Milky Way in Chinese literally means "The Silver River"

Tall Medstudent said...

In english, the milky way literally means, the way of milk! In the books, is he named that specifically because he turns into a dog, or is it a 'coincidence'?

I have been looking for a pear-shaped planet, but my eyes are not that good.

Jordan said...

I found a great deal of useful material here!
Brooklyn neighborhoods | suspension lift | cheap wedges