Ad Astra Observatory

While in California for the weekend, I had a chance to glance skyward and see the stars in their oh-so-familiar positions. I quickly identified Leo and The Dipper, then Arcturus. I was looking around for Spica and ran across Saturn, and noticed that there was something strange going on — Saturn was extremely close to a fairly bright star.

There were a lot of clouds, so I couldn’t exactly figure out which star it was, but I knew it was one of the bright stars in Virgo.

Sure enough, I looked it up on Your Sky (a completely wonderful and free online star chart), and the star is Porrima, the apex of the “satellite dish” asterism in Virgo.

It turns out that the separation was around 30′ (that’s the width of a full moon) and is closing for the next month.

If you get a chance to see this pretty pairing, check it out!