Volcano

On one cloudless September night, I was heading to my home in Rochester from Buffalo. On the way home, I merged onto I-390 N from I-90 E and saw a lot of the Northern part of the sky. Once it was time to come back to school I decided to leave at a later hour in the day. It was around 9:00pm as I got onto I-590 S from NY-590 S which gave me plenty of time to explore the Southern side of the night sky.

As I looked into the northern part of the sky, I noticed the most common asterism right off the bat, The Big Dipper. In the Big Dipper's handle, I saw the star called Alcor, also known as Rider. Once I fully noticed the Big Dipper, I found the pointer stars attached at the front. The pointer stars clearly lead to the brightest star in the sky, Polaris, also known as the North Star. Polaris was the last star in the handle of the little Dipper. Throughout the whole drive home, I noticed that the North Star never moved once in the sky. After observing the two most popular asterisms in the sky, I looked to the left and saw the orange star, Arcturous.

As I was coming back to school, I was observing the southern part of the sky and happened to notice right above my head where the Zenith is located, the Summer Triangle. I saw that the triangle consisted of three stars making the connection of the triangle. One star, noticeably bright was Vega, and straight down from Vega was Altair with a dull star right in the path of the two. To the left of Altair was Deneb and another dull star was placed right in the path of both Altair and Deneb. Inside the triangle there were three faint stars coming straight down from the star, Deneb. As I looked closely, I saw that there was a cross that was formed in the middle of the triangle. I then remembered that the cross was known as the "Northern Cross". It was only a matter of seconds as I glanced over and saw the four stars connecting what is known as the Great Square of Pegasus. My eyes kept on moving to my left and I noticed the connection of two stars making the constellation Aries, also known as a zodiac sign. Straight above Aries I then saw five stars creating the letter "W" and right then I realized it was Cassiopeia.

Once I was done exploring the cloudless sky on the trip to Rochester and back to Buffalo, I realized how interesting our atmosphere actually is. There is of course much more to learn about all the stars, constellations, and galaxies in the universe. The neat