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Originally Posted by sus
Yesterday I got myself all ready so I would be able to spend a few hours outside once it got dark, I thought I would look at the moon as I can find that and I know what it is!!! hahaha Someone told me to look for Saturn and kindly told me where I would find it...I am assuming I never seen it...I did see lots of beautiful stars and an extremely wonderful bright almost like an ice coloured one(I know ice may not to the best way to describe it but anyways). I looked for an app for the ipad and found a one which was meant to show you which star you are looking at when you point it in that direction. So if it was right...I was Canis Major(greater dog), if anyone is familiar with the skies of Perth would this be the star I was looking at? I also found a cluster of stars not far from the moon...iPad says...Butterfly..is this also true?
Hope you all had an amazing night of gazing as I did...I may not know much about what I'm looking at but I'm loving every second, even though my hands and nose were frozen by the time I decided to call it a night!
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Sounds like you're having lots of fun! As Larry says, if you were looking at Canis Major, the "ice-coloured" (not a bad description for a blue/white star) would most likely have been Sirius. But Sirius rises quite late in the evening at the moment in the east (just before midnight in Perth), so what you saw could have been Canopus if you were out earlier in the evening, if you were looking southeast. After midnight or so there's a good chance it was Sirius. Sirius and Canopus are the brightest stars in the sky!
If you are searching for Saturn, look after sunset when the sky is just beginning to darken and the first stars are coming out to play. Looking west, towards the bright sky where the Sun has disappeared, you'll see two bright stars appear very roughly 15-20 degrees above the horizon. Your fist at arms length is 10 degrees, so they should appear a bit more than a fists-width above the horizon, maybe two. The left-hand star is blue-white, and is Spica. The right-hand "star", a little higher than the left-hand one, is yellow and is Saturn! If you can find it with your Astromaster you may see the rings
. Both Spica and Saturn are the brightest things in that area above the western horizon at dusk, but they will set only a little later, so look for them as soon as you can see stars in the sky!
