globe at night.

So, ever since coming across the Astronomy Pic of the Day site, it has become J's and my tradition to look at it every day. I let him read it which gives him a nice challenge with a lot of the astronomical words (haha, thank you very much – and I also showed him the option--D shortcut while hovering over a word which will pop up a dictionary with the definition, which he does with some fascination). We have learned some amazing things, but I thought I would share this particular one from today's post:

Explanation:
How many stars can you see? Through next week, the GLOBE at Night project invites people from all over the world to go outside at night, look up, and see!

Specifically, people are invited to go out an hour after sunset and look for the constellation Orion toward the west. Rather than count Orion's stars directly, however, the GLOBE at Night website has made things easier by providing several star charts to which you can compare your view of Orion.

Possible matches extend from a bright sky where only a few Orion stars are visible, to a very dark sky where over 100 Orion stars are visible.

These are results from last year's sky observation campaign. Since 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy (bet you didn't know that!), it is hoped that an even better map can be created this year. By participating in this easy and fun activity, you are helping humanity to better understand how light pollution is changing across the Earth.

So we of course did this, and have ascertained that where we live on a clear night we are about a magnitude 5 (as in, we can see the three stars of Orion's belt - including of course the Orion Nebula - but not quite as many other stars the magnitude 5 chart depicts). And another interesting bit I did not know is that apparently Orion's belt points towards Taurus (and the Pleiades).

It also of course made me wish I could be somewhere again with a magnitude 7 view.