Monday, April 5, 2010

The skies of South Carolina

The past few days I have been in Hilton Head Island South Carolina. It is absolutely beautiful here and the skies have been beautiful as well. The past 3 nights the skies have been clear and it's warm so I can actually stay outside and look at the sky.
On April 4th around 9:30pm we were walking around harbor town. I showed my family how to find the north star by using the big dipper. I showed them Mars. I also showed them sirius, cassiopeia, and many other constellations as well. While we were looking at the sky I saw a shooting star. It went by so fast it was a lot different than a satellite but it was a wonderful site to see.
Tonight, April 5th my mom, my brothers girlfriend, and I walked down to the beach to look at the sky. We tried to see an iridium flare at 8:33pm at an azimuth of 143 degrees and an altitude of 63 degrees. We were unsuccessful in finding it so i will have to look another time. We did see 2 satellites. We saw GPS 2-05 rocket1 at 8:37 at an azimuth of 358 degrees and an altitude of 76 degrees. I have never seen a satellite before and nether had my mom or my brothers girlfriend. It looks like a moving star in the sky. It was really cool to see, we were on the beach yelling at each other look there it is there it is! It was pretty funny. We also saw the satellite Coronas F rocket. We saw this one at 8:46pm in the East at an altitude of 75 degrees. This one looked to be moving faster than the other satellite we saw.
The last thing we saw was Saturn. It was in the east between Leo and Virgo. When I looked at it through the binoculars I could faintly see the rings. It was really beautiful and exciting to see.
Overall it has been a very successful trip especially in my astronomy adventures

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