Are we there?

'Cause it's really dark.

(Tina) We're pretty close.

All right guys, we're here.

(Avianna) Wow!

There's so many stars!

(Miranda) There's so many stars.

It's like, unbelievable.

(Avianna) I know.

It's like I'm in a movie just watching it.

It's a lot different than the playground.

A lot.

It's like 20, 30 times better.

It's like we can see the brighter ones, and then if you look closely you can see the smaller ones.

I found Cassiopeia, it's pretty exciting.

Really?

Yeah.

(Tina) It's pretty fascinating, it's really overwhelming when you realize just how many stars there are out there.

Most of the stars we see in the night sky are actually all part of the Milky Way, so they're part of our own galaxy.

We're in the Milky Way, so we're seeing stars that are near us or farther away, but I guess the number of stars in the Milky Way itself is something on the order of 10 billion, maybe even a bit more that that.

so we're talking about a lot of stars-- it's far, far more than you can count.

Can you find it, the Summer Triangle?

Well, maybe we might need help from our constellation chart.

(Avianna) Good idea!

The star charts are like the map of the sky.

They just help you know which star is part of which constellation, so that you don't get lost.

But remember, it's dark outside, so...

So we need our... headlights.

(Miranda) We use red lights when we're stargazing because our eyes aren't as sensitive to the red lights as it is to the white lights.

(both) Bidle-bidle- bidle-dah!

(laughter) (Tina) When you have a map of the ground, you hold it on the ground, then you look in your directions-- not at the sky.

What do you do?

You can't look at it this way.

You have to point it upwards.

Oh, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

We're going up.

Okay.

Yup, I'm lookin' up.

Whoa!

Whoa!

Ah, I'm okay.

(Tina) So now you got 1, 2, 3.

Does that match?

(Avianna) Yup.

We looked for the Summer Triangle because it's very easy to find.

And there's one bright star right there.

So we can find the brightest star to the left.

(Avianna) Yeah, west.

(Miranda) I think I found it.

(Avianna) Yeah, I found it.

(Miranda) So that's Vega.

(Avianna) Look, there's all Altair.

And there's Deneb.

(Izzie) Yeah, I can see that!

Wow!

(Miranda) Once we find the Summer Triangle, we see Deneb, then we know that Deneb is part of Cygnus, so we can already start the star count.

Limiting magnitude 1.

"No stars in the cross are visible."

I say I can see more than that.

Yeah, me too.

Limiting magnitude 6.

"S-shaped curve of stars visible."

(Avianna) Then you could see this "s." See the long tail.

Yeah, you can see how faint the star is.

You can see a star.

(Tina) So you got this s-shape, so past limiting magnitude 6.

So then we must be on 7.

(SciGirls) "Too many stars to count."

(Izzie) Too many!

Does that look like the situation we've got here?

(SciGirls) Yeah.

(Tina) All right, so I think we really got to a dark location, right?

(SciGirls) Yeah.

It says the latitude, it's 42.54.

After we saw what the limiting magnitude was, we took out the Smartphone that had a GPS coordinates of the site.

So then we wrote them down on the notebook.

We're right there.

So next time, why don't we do it near North Leominster?

♪ ♪