So the past few weeks we’ve had pretty clear skies in WI (along with not having any snow). My young daughters started taking an interest in looking up at the stars when we get home at night. I myself have started taking note and after the kiddos are in bed, I’ve been shutting off the lights and looking at the moon and stars with a 10x50 pair of binoculars and waking everyone up when I find something cool. Tonight I did find something that I was hoping someone could help identify for me. I’m sorry if my incoming description is not very helpful; I really do not know much about the night sky.
At about 10pm tonight I was looking up in the southwest sky at what I thought might have been one of the dippers (It looked kind of like an upside-down pot with the handle pointing down and to the left). As I scanned the ‘handle’ of this cluster I saw what I first thought was a smudge on the window or binoculars. I confirmed that it wasn’t the window or my binos. This little grouping of two dots had what looked like some kind of hazy aura around it. I’ve never seen anything like it in my 1 week experiencing of looking up. I don’t know what it is (another galaxy maybe?), but I showed my wife and kids and they saw it to (My wife anyway, my 4-year-old said it looks like a jaguar, whatever that means). Anyone know what this might be? I searched around Google, but everything seemed so complicated and not very helpful. I made a link to a masterfully created MS Paint image. I put the main stars of this ‘pot’ that I mentioned. There was a really bright star (one of the brightest in the sky) that was directly below the middle star on the bottom of this pot. I marked this in the drawing. Below is the link to my creation.
You could have been looking at the Orion Nebula M42. Your “pot” could be the central part of the constellation Orion including the three bright stars of Orion’s belt, and the fuzzy looking nebula inside the stars of Orion’s sword. The really bright star, if I read your diagram correctly, would be Rigel. Check the Orion wikipedia article for a good illustration.
If you have an Android phone, Google Sky would be a supremely helpful app for you to have on it. Alternately, Google Earth on PC can be set in Sky mode, where it will display stars, constellations, etc., all with labels.
The dippers are northern constellations, and never appear in the southwest. Or the southeast.
Friendly advice, not meant as snark (because I would never want to discourage anyone from taking up stargazing): Put away the binoculars for a few days, and learn the constellations first. It will make the rest a lot easier and more enjoyable.
There is an app for iPad called Star Walk you might like. You hold the iPad up to the sky and it puts labels on everything you see, including passing satellites. Fun app.
I recommend installing Stellarium. It’s an easy to use free program that shows you what is visible from you location. You need to configure it with your latitude and longitude, which you can find here.
Seconded. The Orion constellation should be nearly instantly recognized, and if you or your daughter get more interested in astronomy, Orion offers a number of very interesting things to look at. But it’s a starting point, and you won’t be able to find very much else if you don’t know how/where to look for them.
