Stargazing

Summer is almost here (for those of us in the Northern climes) and I imagine a lot of folks will head out for some star gazing while the weather’s good. Where we currently live, stargazing also means mosquito-slapping time. No sooner do you get the scope set up than the little bloodsuckers show up for a snack. I remember back in 2001 we were out doing some Mars gazing in the back yard. I had set up my scope and apparently an APB had gone out to the mosquito community — they were swarming in! So, I decided to break out the mosquito coils. If you haven’t seen these things before, they are some sort of clay material that has a mosquito repellent baked into it. You set them on fire and they send up smoke and supposedly ward away the skeeters.

Since the little pests were pretty numerous, I set up five or six coils around the area where I had the scope. We proceeded to check out Mars and some other cool sites, and the coils worked pretty well. It must have looked pretty funny to the neighbors to see us out there with a scope aimed at the sky and what looked like burnt offerings sending little coils of smoke up around us. Wonder if they thought we were appeasing the Mars gods.

But, those are the kinds of things you do when you go stargazing. You slap on bug spray (or Avon’s Skin so Soft — apparently it wards away bugs, too, so there’s a lesson there somewhere), you bring a jacket for when it cools down. You bring your favorite beverage, some food, music, and oh yeah — the star charts. If you’re lucky enough to have a GoTo telescope (with computer, essentially), you use the star charts as backup. It’s a great thing, star gazing. And, you don’t even need all that stuff. You can just do it with the old Mark I eyeballs… oh, and some skeeter repellent.