Wishing we were all in the dark

When I was a boy I remember visiting my grandparents who lived out in the country. What I remember most -- aside from gathering the eggs from under the hens for grandma and helping grandpa with the milking -- was the darkness of the skies.

In town there was a streetlight across the corner from our house that lit up the corner (but not much else) and by retreating to the backyard and putting the several large Black Walnut and broad-leafed Catalpa trees between me and the streetlight I could get a reasonably dark sky.

But out in the country it was different. There were no streetlights so the sky was deep, deep, dark that highlighted the stars like diamonds spread on a black cloth. The view was breathtaking.

Alas, I fear that because of the plethora -- or one might even say scourge -- of streetlights and industrial lighting, and the yellow-blazing sodium vapor lights that rob our neighborhoods of dark, many of our youth today have never, ever, seen the stars from a really dark-sky place and have no idea of the beauty that is just over their heads

That is why I enjoyed working with the schools in Benkelman, Nebraska where I used to live. Once or twice a year I would meet a busload of students out in the country, under a truly dark sky to give them a glimpse of what was up there and what was to be enjoyed.

Out there we would tour constellations, look at a few selected celestial objects through one of my telescopes, and locate a planet or two. It was giving them something they had never, ever, really seen before even though they lived in a small town. Even there light pollution was eroding what could be seen and was taken for granted by their parents and grandparents.

Here in Denver, the sky is never dark, there is always a faint background glow that permeates the sky. Sort of just like -- or even worse than--a perpetual full moon. Oh, there are a few locations I have found that can give a little better opportunity at a sort of dark sky, but not like out in the country.

I can still make out the major constellations, a few bright stars, and of course the planets that are visible now--Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn and soon Mercury.

And I can locate them only because I know what they look like and where they are. For someone who has never seen a dark sky, they often have no clue.

But, enough of my "editorializing," let's get down to business. I am trusting you, dear reader, have access to a reasonably dark sky and will enjoy locating and observing what we talk about here.

Venus is, still, the "object of our affection" in the early evening skies. As we continue our "Venus Watch" the bright planet is between the tips of the bull's horns (Taurus) just to the right of the squashed oval of Auriga, the Charioteer.

Tonight, April 29, if you have access to the aforementioned dark sky, slap your binoculars on Venus and put it on the extreme right edge of the field of view at about the 3:00 o'clock position. If you look to the opposite edge at about the 8:00 o'clock position, and a little in from the edge, you might locate the first object French comet hunter, Charles Messier, put on his list of fuzzy things that were not comets--M1, the Crab Nebula. As the week progresses toward May 1, the view should get better.

The nebula is at about magnitude eight so should be within range of your 10x50 binoculars.

While we have been watching Venus, tiny Mercury has crept up over the horizon and is now playing tag with the Pleiades star cluster. Look in the WNW sky about 30-minutes after local sunset near the horizon for the little planetary speedster just left of the cluster. Binoculars will be essential.

SKYWATCH: Full moon, Sunday, May 3.

NEXT WEEK: Who stole the Milky Way and more astronomical blathering.