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Volume 19 -- Issue 05
What's Up? -- May 2013

This Mother's Day, 12 May, give your mother a starry diamond.

   About an hour after local sunset go outside and face south and look for the planet Saturn above the southeast horizon. Then look up to the right for the bluish-white colored star Spica.
   Spica, a star in Virgo the Harvest Maiden, marks the lower corner of the asterism known as 'the Diamond of Virgo'. To see the asterism look up to the left from Spica for the reddish star Arcturus in the kite-shaped constellation Bootes the Herdsman. Then look nearly straight up, the zenith, for the dimmest of the diamond stars, Cor Caroli in Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs. Then look down to the right for the star Denebola, the tail of Leo the Lion.