Had a lovely late evening of stargazing last night out at John’s parents’ farm. It’s a bit further removed from the light pollution, so it was cold, dark, and clear, so much so that you could see the Milky Way, no small feat for those of us living closer to civilization. I pulled out my slightly battered Newtonian reflector (non-motorized, all manual–old school), and found a few things in the sky, among them the Pleiades, the Orion and Andromeda nebulae, Mars, and Saturn (the telescopic highlight of the evening). The original occasion for our excursion out into the countryside were the Aurora Borealis, which were supposed to be uncommonly clear and vibrant due to an atypically violent solar eruption, but they didn’t show themselves. Donald and Rebekah did see quite a few shooting stars, though. I was too geekily engrossed with the telescope until the end to just gaze at them, so I didn’t see any, but just being out there again was quite wonderful.