If there’s one thing I love about the desert, it’s the star-filled skies we don’t see in Europe any more, because of light pollution.
You get out of the Berber tent, lie down on the ground (on a rug or mattress, it’s more comfortable), and let your gaze wander to the stars.
But as much as I love looking at the stars, I’m no astronomy expert. As easy as it is to find ready-made sky charts for European cities, it becomes a bit more complicated for the Moroccan desert, and all the astronomy sites I’d found so far were a bit too complicated for me.
So Mezgarne has received a very nice present from Stelvision, a site designed for amateur astronomers and beginners: a sky chart of Mezgarne.
I’ve put a screenshot of it here: the sky chart for 1 January 2010.
But the nice gift that the creator of this site has given us is to add the Mezgarne Oasis to his database of coordinates. (For those who are curious, he uses the geonames.org global database, and of course Tazzarine is not there). So I’ll be able to give you regular sky charts for important dates, or, if you’re planning a desert tour for the day you’ll be visiting our campsite.
And I’ll be looking up at my stars again, wishing you a bright and happy 2010, under the sign of your lucky star, whatever it may be.
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