Star Gazing

When I was a kid, I loved astronomy. My favorite place to go was the Hayden Planetarium. By the time I was in 4th grade, I had read every book on astronomy in my school library. For my birthday that year, I got a telescope. Not that I could see much from my bedroom window in Queens!

There are two things I've always wanted to see. The first is the Milky Way. I've never been away from light pollution enough to see it. The second is the aurora borealis. When I asked about my chances of seeing either on Atka, I was told that it's usually too overcast to see the former, and the latter is too elusive to predict.

I was blessed with sunshine during my first 36 hours here. Sunny days are rare on Atka. The second sunny day was followed by a perfectly clear night. The Big Dipper was hanging in the sky in exactly the orientation it is on the Alaskan flag. With no other lights to compete with it, it looked huge and brilliant. I didn't have my camera with me, and who knows if I'll see it like that again. But if I do, I'll take a picture to share with you!

On such a clear night, the Milky Way was visible. It wasn't as amazing as I expected it to be. The cloud of stars that is actually a view of our galaxy didn't have the pinpoints of light from other stars that I expected. Still, it was definitely something different in a stripe across the sky.

I have a star gazing program on my iPad. I'll have to start taking it with me when we go for night time walks!