Geek warning. A thread on a board I read regularly spurred me to go out and try to do some basic astronomy. We only have one crappy little set of binoculars, but I thought I would at least see if I could orient myself. Living in the city means you only get a handful of stars (though Melbourne has far clearer nights than any comparably-size city I know). But with a little help from Your Sky and a field guide I bought a long time ago, I was able to pick out the tail of Scorpius yesterday. Slightly hazy tonight, but I spotted it again, and followed a trail from it to a particularly bright star just above the horizon. My field guide identified it as Rigil Kentaurus, which didn't sound familiar. So I looked it up online, and it turns out that that's just the proper name for Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbor! A lucky find, considering there were only twenty or so stars even visible through the haze. Like the Southern Cross (supposedly right next to it, but obscured by a cloud), it's not visible from most of the Northern hemisphere. Pretty cool, I think.