Stars

Mary Beth and I went downtown to the Beale St. Landing in the evening for this Memphis Astronomical Society stargazing thing. They just set up on the lawn/roof of the Landing building (the thing down in the park on the river) with a couple telescopes and people got to come up and look at the different things they were looking at. First it was the sun as it was setting (with a special filter of course). Then after it set, over at the moon (which we got to see some real nice detail). Then later Venus. Then Saturn (really cool, got to see the little lines of the rings poking out!). And then finally Albireo, which I didn't know anything about. To the naked eye it looks like one star, but it's actually two when you look in the telescope (one's brighter and orange and one's smaller and blue...and looking it up, actually the bigger one is in itself two stars orbiting each other, and they're so close it's not visible in the telescope...it's thought that the two main stars are not orbiting each other but are just visually close together). Anyway, that was fun. Also laying down on a blanket and looking at the sky and just looking out at the river at the boats and barges and stuff.

I forgot to mention in my last post that on Thursday, after Milton, I talked (well, messaged) Luís for a little bit. They're all okay and their house is okay so that's good! Hadn't talked to him at all in a very long while so it was good to (especially since they seemed to come out of the storm unscathed...though no power or water or anything for now, but hopefully things are able to straighten out sooner than later).