Stargazing Instead of Knitting

Last night wasn’t spent knitting like most of my evenings. Instead, I took off a bit after 1pm with a few others from Tsfat for the desert in the south of the country. We did make two stops along the way and arrived at the Ramon crater approximately 5 hours later. We took a mattress and chose our spots in for sleeping and then we had a light picnic dinner before our stargazing event began.
I was one of about 40 lying under the skies in a crater near Mitzpe Rimon watching the Perseid meteor shower and checking out several constellations: the dippers, Sagittarius, the Milky Way and we were also shown the Andromeda Galaxy. Saturn, Mars and Spica formed a triangle with Saturn at the top, Mars was the left (east) point of the triangle and Spica (Virgo’s brightest star) was directly underneath Saturn.  I got to see Saturn through a telescope and once my eyes adjusted looking through the telescope, I no longer saw an oval, I actually saw Saturn with its ring around it. It was an amazing sight.   
For the first time I saw a yellow star and a red star, Antares (meaning "Rival of Mars") is the bright red star in the heart of the Scorpion. Spica is a blue star. The brightest stars of the dippers are blue-white. It was so peaceful and enjoyable there stargazing.
In the crater, there is a campground, where we stayed. I slept, with many others, in the Bedouin-style tent there. It was a bit hard to fall asleep since there were two heavy snorers. Finally, I did fall asleep. I got up about 5:30am and saw the sunrise, then went back to sleep for about an hour before getting up for the day.

Now to get ready for a scorching weekend!