February 9/10 2013

This is a “no moon” weekend and, as such, a very auspicious date. On Sunday, up in Allahabad, it is the main bathing day for the Maha Kumbh Mela and of course it is also Chinese New Year. I am sure this is not a coincidence. And on Saturday and Sunday quite a few large groups were gathered at the Sadaiyandy Temple down the road (more on that in another blog) together with the goats to be sacrificed and then stewed. But for us, last night and the previous two have been fabulous for star-gazing. There was no cloud cover at all, and, while we are not in an official “dark sky” area such as they have in Galloway in south-west Scotland, we have very little light pollution here.

I downloaded the star maps for our latitude and longitude for 9pm and 4am from an excellent free…