I love a clear dark night where I can look up and see nothing but stars in the sky. A cold front had just blown threw and the temperatures dropped making this a perfect night for star gazing.

I always try to find the group of stars that I am more familiar. The Big Dipper as most call it in the USA are 7 stars of the Ursa Major constellation. Four stars define a "bowl" or "dipper" and three define a "handle". Other countries and/or cultures have other names for it. I looked all around and then finally just above the horizon in the east I finally found it.

The dipper is on top with the handle pointing down to the horizon. This is why it took me a while to find it. I was looking for it upright.

There are a lot more stars in the photo than I thought there would be. With all the light pollution, it is very hard to see the stars now as like I was able to in my youth over 50 years ago.

At first I was not completely sure I had found the correct group of stars because of the way they were positioned in the sky until I opened my app I use to identify stars in the night sky. I tried to hold the phone in the same position as I held it when taking the photo so that it would be easier to compare.

Here is the screen from the app showing all the stars with Ursa Major clearly marked in the sky.

In case you still can not find it in the first photo, I edited the photo by circling and placing a line between each of the stars to make sure you can see the image.