Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for November 08, 2020

Clear cold nights always remind me of when I was twelve and got a telescope

Being a city boy meant limited star gazing. To this day I’ve never seen the Milky Way.

Once stopped on vacation in the fall at night near the border of Kansas and S. Dakota not far South of Red Cloud. It was full dark and the nearest light was a farm light maybe 8 miles away. I turned off on a side road, shut the lights off and gave our eyes a little time to recover. and got out. The sky was absolutely BRILLIANTE It actually spooked my Sister-in-law so much she would NOT get out of the car! No moon, and stars were visible right down to the horizon!

dark at 6 – it is Dark at 5 here

And I can still go to bed early.

Around the equator, it’s always ark by 6:30pm… It gets old very fast!

Five o’clock Central Time.

I’m checking here because I understand the importance of doing well on this site. Yet I’m still waiting for news about the Kickstarter project you ran four years ago.

It’s nightfall and you’re wasting perfectly good darkness standing outside? Fully dressed? You two are getting old!

Early to bed, early to rise…

I do appreciate the early dark. That way this lark gets the morning light earlier.

I’m enjoying our Indian Summer here in Ohio. Today it will be 78°. I remember just a couple years ago we had snow on the ground by now.

One of the pleasures of walking Jaws of Death and his buddy is seeing the star and planet displays in the late autumn and winter skies.

Under perfect conditions, you could see ~ 4500 stars with the naked eye. If there are roughly 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, then we would only see ~0.0000045% of the stars in our galaxy.

For sky watchers, that is a serious plus…..

I have seen it very clear in AZ and in northern MN. WOW!

Leave it to Arlo to find all the advantages!

As a retired astronomy teacher and planetarium director (34 years) and a lifetime avid amateur astronomer/stargazer I really appreciate that, in the second panel, Jimmy got it right! There’s Sagittarius (AKA the Teapot) in the correct orientation for its position in the south western sky in the early evening as viewed from the continental US this time of year. He even has the crescent moon with the crescent facing the right way. Too often I’ve seen portrayals of the night sky in public media where it’s all wrong, the artist/producer didn’t do their “homework”. Kudos to Jimmy, he did his homework.

Very true. I’m am amateur astronomer and it is nice not to have to stay up until 10 p.m. to do some viewing.

Did anyone else recognize Sagittarius?

When I was a kid, my parents would pick me up at my grandmothers after dark. My grandmother lived in the country about 15 miles from our town. I would lay in the back seat of the car and stare up at alllll the stars!!! Now it seems as if so many have ‘gone out’.

It was early in my youth (1960’s) one time only have I see Orion’s arm directly.

I hate the time change, but I love the fall weather.

Arlo makes a VERY good point here. Several of them, in fact.

well when I go far up north for my fishing trip you really get to see the stars. Plus if you star long enough you start seeing the darker patches of the solar system. It is a sight to see at night.

Dark at 5:00 here.

Say you it’s not too cold