Astronomy for the Common Folk

Love this comic by xkcd. They titled it “Stargazing“. I think I prefer “Astronomy for the Common Folk”.

On a related note, I was recently up at 2am with our son taking a walk in a nearby park to help him ease a persistent cough in the cool air and we were talking about the stars, Saturn’s rings and other bodies in our cosmic neighbourhood.

I bought the Star Walk 2 app (and, before that, Star Walk) and it is a great augmented reality app that gives you a sort of overlay over the stars you point your phone or tablet at. Great app to identify the things we see in the night sky. Another option is the Star Walk for Kids app which has more cartoonish imagery for kids.

Image credit: A Long Night Falls Over Saturn’s Rings from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, licensed CC BY 2.0