Winter is actually a wonderful time to make star observasion, for the sky can be much more clear than other seasons.

I went out one night last week with my friend and we saw lots of constellations.

One of them is the "Big Dipper", which refer to the seven famous stars in Ursa Major, and through the dipper we easily found the Polaris. It was quite dim, but was still bright enough for us to figure out.

Also, we saw the Cassiopeia ("W" shape) and Andromeda. However we could't see the beautiful galaxy in Andromeda (M31). What a pity...Maybe we can find it using a telescope, which I'm planning to get after finish my study of this semester. Beside Andromeda we found Pegasus. The big square which is formed by four stars was so obvious.

Facing west, Altair and Vega could be found being seperated by the milky way (we couldn't actually see the milky way); facing south, Jupiter led our way throught the whole year; facing East, Auriga was shining in the sky. Capella, the α star in this constellation is almost as obvious as Jupiter. Later we found Castor and Pollux, the α star and the β star of Gemini, and Orion, part of which could't be seen because of the high buildings in the city center.

I also figured out two constellations that I never saw before. One was Cygnus, the North Cross. This was the firat time I saw the whole shape of this constellation. The other was Taurus. Actually we saw Aldebaran and Pleiades! I could't believe that I really saw Pleiades! It was so dim that at first I didn't realize what it really was---I just thought that it was cloud...

Anyway, I was extreme exciting that night and I swore to myself that I would buy a telescope for my 20th birthday present!