Fun with MySky
When I was younger, I had a clear idea of what I wanted for my 40th birthday: maybe a $400,000 plane, maybe a $40,000 sports car, depending on my finances. The fateful birthday came and went last week, and I’m a professor, so my finances are nowhere near what I expected. I settled for the $400 MySky from Meade. The MySky looks vaguely like a gun, and you can use it as a guide to the night sky. Not sure what that bright star or planet is? Simply point the MySky at it, and you’ll have that object’s information at your fingertips, often including gorgeous color images on the MySky LCD screen. True, the plane or the car would have been fun, but the MySky has turned to be a lot of fun!
The first night I took MySky out for a spin was a great disappointment. Following the directions, I installed the batteries and turned MySky on well away from any cars or metal objects. The Pleiades star cluster was rising over the mountains, so I pointed MySky at it and discovered that it was Canes Venatici. Uh, no. I know where Canes Venatici is, and it is nowhere near the Pleiades.
Like a good computer scientist, I decided to reboot the MySky to see if the problem went away. The boot sequence was slightly different this time, probably because I was more careful. After a few screens, MySky asked me for the current location. There are a few ways to provide this, such as direct input (i.e., typing it in) or getting a GPS fix. I selected GPS fix, and I was surprised when it warned me that would take 2 to 6 minutes. That’s a long time for a GPS fix, but ok, I could wait.
Thirty minutes later, I still did not have a GPS fix. MySky would try to get a fix, and it could detect a few satellites at a time, but it would eventually time out. I was cold and increasingly frustrated, so I gave up. So much for MySky.
The next few nights were more exercises in frustration, as the weather completely turned against me. But Monday night the skies cleared enough to see some stars. It was a horrible sky by my usual standards, with low clouds and a moon bright enough to cast shadows. But I could see some stars, and that was enough for me. So I got a comfortable chair, and tried to get MySky to find some satellites. The first time the GPS fix failed again, but the second time was perfect: a GPS fix in under a minute! Immediately I got up and started using the MySky. Within minutes, it had identified Deneb, Vega, and Altair in the west. It worked! Then I spotted an unfamiliar star and put MySky to the task: Fomalhaut (duh, why didn’t I recognize it?). I got Mona out and she had fun with it, too. On a lark, we pointed it at the moon, which MySky correctly identified as “Waxing Gibbous”!
This morning Mona had to leave early on a business trip, so I walked out with her and was greeted with an amazing sky. Venus was bright in the east, and Sirius was still visible to the southwest. And if you knew where to look, you could even see Orion further to the west. Once Mona left, I woke up Emily and took her outside. MySky identified all the visible objects, and she was hooked. It’s a family thing now. We’ll be going out often, looking at and learning about the sky.