Big Dipper

My mom has this strange thing about looking at stars at night. She loves to try to find constellations and identify different planets in the night sky. She's been trying to teach me, but so far I am too easily distracted by the dogs or the loud cicadas. Mom took an astronomy class in college as one of her required science classes. She didn't enjoy the actual class (except when her and Megan would play hangman and write notes back and forth like they were in middle school again - she said something about how she dreaded any class that met in Colden 3500 [whatever that means]), but she adored the 10pm lab class that viewed stars. After college, Mom even went down to Kitt Peak in Arizona, one of the national observatories. Anyway, the other night Mom took the dogs outside to go bathroom and she ran back inside and grabbed both the camera and me, rambling on some Big Dipper. I thought she was going to get me some ice cream or something, but then she just pointed up to the stars.

(she said you might have to click on the picture to see the stars)

She set her shutter speed on 30 seconds and took a few photos! Later, on the computer screen, I could see the constellation, but only becasue she drew in the lines for me!