Bright Springtime Night Sky

Tonight I got off from work a little early and, a little bit after arriving home, I let out my dog Freckles out  into the backyard, much to her delight (she is very nocturnal, loving the nighttime while very wary of the sunny day).  I walked out there myself and looked around, and then up at the sky.  It was quite amazingly clear and the stars shone very brightly for this time of the year.  My "favorite" constellation Corvus the Crow (or more appropriately, Corvus the Quadrilateral) was smack dab on the southern meridian.  North and to the east (left) a bit was the twin attraction of Virgo's first-magnitude star Spica and the planet Saturn.  I turned around and looked to the north: the Big Dipper asterism of the constellation Ursa Major was brighter than I had seen it in years, in its perfectly inverted position straight north of me.  To its east (right), Draco "snaked" around, with its head ending in close proximity (in a projected sort of way) to Lyra's "jewel", the beautiful star Vega.

I guess the moon is somewhere else in the sky, otherwise this rare spectacle wouldn't have happened.  And in spite of the dearth of rainfall in this drought zone, the air was full of the noisy sounds of frogs while the dreaded onslaught of mosquitoes has yet to appear.  Spring, wonderful spring...