Week 37 -- Go star-gazing and spot 2 constellations

Neck of Ursa Major is what I first saw on this constellation.

     We're baaaacckk! After several weeks off for traveling baseball teams, two weeks without a computer and a number of other excuses, we are back with a new "adventure in retirement!!"
     One of the clever cards in the deck of 52 that our children presented us last year when we retired says: "Go star-gazing and spot two constellations besides the dippers."
     Well, we got one half-right.
     One of the benefits to this year's drought and extreme heat is that we delayed our daily walk until  the temperature dropped below 95, which meant 9 or 9:30 p.m. And because we have had about 2 inches of rain all summer, most nights the skies were cloudless. So we got a good look at the skies almost every night.
     I am not good at seeing constellations, EXCEPT for the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, but the card says we can't use that for our star-gazing assignment. I did see the Big Dipper but what I
noticed first was the curved neck of what I think

This triangle is not really a constellation.

is Ursa Major, which happens to include the Big
Dipper. Ursa Major is supposed to be a bear, even though it looks more like a horse. So, seeing the Big Dipper helped us locate Ursa Major, even though I first thought it was Orion, until internet research told me Orion is not visible at night this time of year!
    The second thing we saw was this triangle in the low western sky. It turns out this "summer triangle" is not a constellation but two planets and a star. It is the planets Saturn and Mars plus a star named Spica, which is the brightest star in the constellation Virgo (although I never could see Virgo). According to the internet, Mars should be red, Saturn yellow and Spica a bluish white, but they all just look white to me.
     The skies really have been clear and beautiful this summer. We have always liked looking at the skies and wondering if our kids, so far away at different times, in Colombia, Germany, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon and Arizona, can see the same night sky that we do and if it is as beautiful to them as it is to us. We always feel a link to our kids when we look at the sky and see the beautiful stars in the black expanse.