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This, alas, must be a rather brief and pathetic post. For the last two weeks, I have been reading books on astronomy and star gazing, and I have been very eager to do more star gazing. But that whole time we have had, here in Fairbanks, an almost unbroken continuance of overcast cloud conditions. That, coupled with the fact that, in my location, one must currently get up at about 1am or 2am for workable light conditions, has made stargazing near impossible for the working man.
However, since it was Friday night, and the weather forecast did not show any better conditions for the foreseeable future, I was determined to make some kind of effort, so I woke myself up about 1:30am to go take a look. The conditions were very bad, with thick overcast clouds, made worse by the glow from the full moon. Sadly, the moon itself was also covered by clouds, so I couldn't study it either.
I stood around for a few minutes, and two small holes did open up in the cloud cover, one towards the NNE, and one towards the south. For about 30 seconds or so, I was able to see bright Capella, before it was swallowed up by clouds again.
Towards the south, I was able to see briefly one star, and after I focused on it with my 4x30 binoculars, I saw a distinctive star pattern with that star, and four other stars forming one-quarter of a circle around the top left of it. Afterwards, I looked around in Stellaris for a while, but I am still not certain what star I was looking at. Based on all the notes and measurements I took, I thought perhaps it might have been Alkarab, inside the Pegasus constellation. I'm highly doubtful, but anyway here is a Stellaris screenshot of Alkarab:
I'm hoping/praying for better star gazing opportunities as we approach the Autumn Equinox. Of course, here in Alaska we have plenty of darkness once we get deep into winter, but the benefit is offset somewhat by the sub-zero temperatures.
