Swan Nebula

My friend Jon got a telescope recently and while it's been too cold for much star-gazing, he did allow me a peek through it a few nights ago. I hadn't looked through a telescope since my high school Astronomy class, so it was pretty fun to get a closer look at the cosmos even on a painfully cold night. That class in high school marks perhaps the only time I took more than a minimal interest in science class and launched a lifetime fascination with the stars. Yes we spent a good deal of time learning more mundane facts and memorizing numbers and relevant equations, but we also had a section where we learned the Hawaiian names for constellations and about how Polynesians used the stars to navigate (I was living on Oahu at the time). Most of the facts and figures have vacated by mind, but memories of the Swan Nebula through a telescope and the taste of lychee candy on my tongue still burn strong.