Shooting stars

I can see a lot of stars at night, it's so beautiful. I take Zeppo out on a walk before bed, and once our house disappears behind the trees the road is pitch black on a moonless night. There are about two patches of urban glow, a large one from nearby Potsdam, and then Massena in the distance. But to the East and North it is perfectly black. The milky way stretches above my head, and the stars are everywhere.

Before going out last night, I spent about an hour looking at star charts to work out where the Pleides meteor shower was going to be. It turns out that I can't make heads or tails of the charts. I did find a neat program called My Stars from a website called Learn what's up. You put in your location and the date/time and it fills in a star field. But even though it names the constellations, it doesn't draw the pictures, which is something I need to learn from. And it wasn't printable. But I'll keep at it, I'd love to be able to know all the constellations and major stars so that I can teach the kids.

In the end, I didn't need to know my east from west or my Ursa Major from Minor, because I caught sight of two shooting stars by chance, right across the Big Dipper. I can't wait to see how many more there are tonight as the meteor shower hits it's peak.