Star Gazing with Stellarium

Today, I did star gazing. My room mate, Rajesh accompanied me. I used Stellarium for Star Gazing. The sky was better. There were only a few cirrus clouds, which didn’t deter us from seeing at least a few stars. The last time I tried seeing, we had Rain clouds. So, it was difficult to spot even a few stars. But this time it was lot better. This time too, I made the mistake of not taking any compass with me. But, to my rescue, the Moon was bright and shining. The first thing to do was to orient the direction of Moon in Stellarium to that in the Sky. Once that was done, things became easier. Sirius was very bright and was the first star to be spotted easily. I was also able to find the Orion constellation, along with Betelgeuse, Canis-Minor. It was cold at the terrace, with the temperature around 15˚C. The best part I liked about the software is its maneuverability.

I am pasting the screenshot of Stellarium position of the stars below. All stars that I was able to see are marked with a white square. I gazed only with naked eyes; no sophisticated instruments were involved in star gazing except the laptop.