Last night, I took a friend out to Pedernales Falls State Park for their Summer Constellations!

The event was at the Stonehenge Amphitheatre

This pic is from a previous event, but it gives you a better view of the amphitheatre.

We'd gone out there last month for The Meteor Shower Show, but I actually saw more meteors on this night than I did last time (the moon was much brighter last time).

We got there a bit late, but no sooner than we sat down, a meteor trailed through the sky, dimly but for a good distance, it certainly got a crowd response!

I saw another 5 after that one, mostly dim, but clearly meteors. One, however, was lower in the horizon and made a nice show! I only saw one last time LOL.

In fact, when the Ranger set up his telescope for public viewing, I declined so I could watch for more meteors. However, my friend was very interested in those, and she dragged me over when the Ranger focused on Saturn. Wow! A very crisp image of the planet and it's rings. It was all white in this view from reflected light, but it was amazing to look at.

I hung around the telescope for a while after that, and got a look at the Andromeda Galaxy, at only 2 and a half million light-years from Earth. To be honest though, it really just looked like a glowing spider web...a small glowing spider web ;> The Andromeda Galaxy can be seen as M31 in the next picture.

TPWD runs these events every couple of weeks. You can check at the website or the farcebook link above for more event listings...and at other TPWD parks, as well!

Picture credits

• The first two pics are courtesy of Texas Parks and Wildlife
• The next two pics are from Wikipedia