Stargazing 2024-12-29: Corona Borealis (publ. 2024-12-29)

I was able to get outside for a few minutes of stargazing this morning, before the boys woke up. I sketched the area around a dim star off toward the SW. In our bright suburban skies, with snow reflection, I could only see the brightest star on this sketch with my naked eye, and so I did not initially know that I was sketching Corona Borealis. Here is the sketch:

sketch targeting Corona Borealis

I took a slightly different approach this time with the sketching: instead of recording the estimated angular distances as numbers on the sketch, I just put some scale markers on the side of the page and attempted to roughly keep to that scale as I drew the dots. Also, I surveyed the area first, to decided how many brightness levels I could distinguish, and then I drew some circles on the side of the page as standards for how I would draw the various dot sizes.

R CrB is, according to Wikipedia, a very well-known variable star whose (visible light) brightness varies dramatically over only a few years time. It must be fairly bright right now as I'm certain I wasn't seeing any stars much dimmer that magnitude 8.

Afterwards, on the way to church, I was listening to a beautiful song on 105.9 MHz, with these words:

I Love The Lord

He Heard My Cry

He Lifted Me Way Up High

Set My Feet Upon The Mountain Top

Just Think Of It The Lord And King

The Creator Of Everything

Loves Me With A Love That Won’t Stop

I later figured out, with a search engine, that this is the song "A Love That Won't Stop".

Copyright

CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed