Orion cos - for some reason - I find it reassuring to see it up there. It moves around (as
I perceive it, that is!) and being in London with tall buildings and light pollution I don't
often see Orion, so when I do it's nice. Occasionally I think that I might find it quite
troubling to be in the southern hemisphere and not recognise the sky, and that I might
experience what Douglas Adams meant when he wrote:
"In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny sublimal signal.
This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that
being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen
thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn't very far, so such signals are too
minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was
born 600 light years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse."
So as an earthling my signal would still be pretty weak
I also like Cassiopeia because in 1986 when Halley's comet came past the person my
school went to hear doing a stand up comet-ry explanation (including how to find it with
our binocs) mentioned that we could use Cass. to orient our eyes to the right bit of the
sky.
Right I'm going to dig out that amazing constellation recognising 'game' that someone
put on here a while back. It was outstanding. Startling in fact.