Star Gazing

The night of December 24, I was out for about 2 hours looking at the sky with my little sister. While she was keeping her eyes out for Santa and his flying reindeer, I was busy looking at the constellations and occasional shooting star. While outside, it was a clear night with hardly any clouds and I had a good pair of binoculars. The magnification of these binoculars helped me see the phase of Venus, which was in a waning crescent. I was also able to recognize almost all of the winter constellations we have learned thus far. We were in my back yard in Venice, which gets fairly dark and I am able to see all 2nd magnitude stars as well as some 3rd magnitude stars. The time flew by because all of the interesting things that I saw and the amount of time it took to locate these stars and planets.