There is a lot to see in the evening sky this March 2012. The Moon is out of the way until near the end of the month and the two brightest planets Venus and Jupiter are close together in the north-west. On the other side of the sky Mars is still bright in the east after its recent opposition. The planets are augmented by the International Space Station making bright evening passes and there are occasional bright flashes from Iridium satellites.
Among all this activity it is also worth looking at some old favourites such as the constellation of Orion that is prominent high in the western sky. Orion is one of the easiest constellations to recognise with four bright stars in a rectangle and three stars in a row in the middle. In Australia many
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Orion is one of the two southern hemisphere constellations available for this purpose. There are two opportunities left this year to contribute, until 22 March 2012 and 11 to 20 April 2012. Contributing an observation is easy to do and there is a cool webapp so that observations can be submitted in real-time.
The brightest star in the constellation is the blue supergiant Rigel that represents the left foot of the giant Orion according to Greek mythology. Strangely, the star is named Beta Orionis even though it is the brightest star. It is at a distance of 860 light years from us and radiates 85 000 times as much energy as our Sun. There is a faint companion that is itself double and is so far from the main star that it takes over 20 000 years to make one circuit.
The Alpha star in the constellation and the second brightest star is the huge red supergiant Betelgeuse. It is so huge that if it replaced the Sun it would engulf all the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. It is at a distance of about 570 light years and radiates 85 000 times as much energy as our
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This star is a blue supergiant like Rigel, but even hotter. This high temperature means that more of its energy is radiated as ultraviolet and so it appears fainter than Rigel to our eyes.
The fourth of the stars forming Orion’s rectangle is Bellatrix. This is again a hot blue star that at a distance of 240 light year is closer to us than most of the other stars in Orion.
Finally, let’s mention Meissa that according to the old mythological drawings is the head of the giant Orion. This is a double star with one component being a rare O-class star with the extreme temperature of about 35 000 Kelvin while its companion is a little cooler 27 000 Kelvin. (The Kelvin temperature scale used by astronomers is the same as the ordinary Celsius scale, but with 273 added so that the freezing point of water is at 273 K.)
So on these dark autumn evenings once you had your fill of the bright planets and satellites, have a look at the giant Orion and then maybe report what you see to Globe at
"Leda and the Constellation Cygnus." Department of Engineering, University of Michigan. 17 February 1999 http://windows.ivv.nasa.gov/mythology/cygnus.html.
yourself in Northern California. frozen shore of Tule Lake. Now regard what sort of shape. this constellation takes a look. It sits there like a jagged scar.
Ptoloemy first charted the constellation during the second century. According to christian mythology, draco the dragon was first known to have tempted Eve at the garden of Eden. The constellation draco the dragon takes an aera of one-thousand eighty three square degrees. Draco the dragon has five known stars that have planets around them. The brightest star in the constellation is Gamma Draconis, or Eitanin. The constellation was also called Tawarent in ancient Egypt. Draco the dragon contains some deep-sky objects. One is the cat's eye Nebula. The
Perseus, or “the hero,” has twenty-eight stars. The brightest, most recognizable ones are Mirfak and Algol. Mirfak is the brightest star of Perseus. It is a little bit brighter than Polaris, the North Star. Algol is the most famous star. In the constellation, Algol is the eye of Medusa, translating to “demon star.” People used to think that Algol was cursed due to its constant change in brightness, but we know today that sometimes another star overlaps Algol, causing its magnitude to appear to change. Perseus has six stars with confirmed planets. (Coder pp. 85 & 87, Fanshawe, Perseus Constellation, Perseus Hero)
The constellation Perseus is located with a right ascension of 3 hours and declination of 45 degrees (Dolan, Chris). Perseus is visible from August to March in the northern hemisphere. The constellation Pegasus has a right ascension of 22 hours and a declination of 20 degrees (“Pegasus”). Pegasus is visible from July to January.
Celestial objects have amazed the human race ever since history started being recorded. The moon, the stars and all visible heavenly bodies have been studied for thousands of years, millions of people over the decades have dedicated their lives to researching these wondrous objects. The moon alone has been the subject of not only research but endless discoveries as well, and for many others, the moon was a goddess. According to Donald J. Frederick, ancient civilizations like the Mayans deemed the moon as a feminine entity, they worshipped the moon in order to get pregnant. The Greeks called the goddess of the moon by the name Selene, and also adored it. Copious other ancient civilizations saw the moon with great reverence as well. Others have taken the time to decode what ancient writings say of the heavenly spheres, the Bible specifies that the moon, sun, and the stars are used by God to mark the different seasons. According to Dennis McCarthy from the U.S. Naval Observatory, to be able to distinguish between seasons, one uses the location of the sun with respect to the stars, to be able to tell from day and night, one uses the rising and setting of the sun, and to be able to tell between months, one uses the phases of the moon. In that respect it can be assumed that the Bible, which was written more than two thousand years ago, was indeed, correct. But what about the portions that say that those same celestial bodies are used by God as divine signs?
This cluster located in Hercules consist of about 300,000 stars. It is more than “22,200 light years away, the brightest star in the cluster is call v11” (Constellation Guide, n.d.). The second objects that I find in the Hercules constellation is called NGC 6166. This object is classified as a supermassive type galaxy it’s an elliptical galaxy with a large number of stars. It is calculated that NGC 6166 consist of approximately 50 million stars, it is located about 490 million light years away, a galaxy that massive has a supermassive black hole at its core. The third objects is called Hercules A, it is an elliptical galaxy with plasma jets spanning over a million lights years around the galaxy. “It has a mass 1,000 times more than the milky way galaxy also at the center of Hercules A is its black hole which is more massive that the black hole at the center of the milky way” (Kerrod,
It’s a white giant and has a temperature of 7700 Kelvin. It’s a type A star that is 8.5 times brighter than the sun. It is most likely to be in the last stage of ordinary star-type life. Scientists are saying the sun’s older twin is found in the middle of Capricorn. Studying this star will help them see how the Earth’s sun will develop.
At Beltane the Pleiades star cluster rises just before sunrise on the morning horizon. The Pleiades is a cluster of seven closely placed stars, the seven sisters, in the constellation of Taurus, near his shoulder. When looking for the Pleiades with the naked eye, remember it looks like a tiny dipper-shaped pattern of six moderately bright star in the constellation of Taurus. It stands very low in the east-northeast sky for just a few minutes before sunrise.
2, Alter Dinsmore, Cleminshaw H. Clarence, Philips G John. Pictorial Astronomy. United States: Sidney Feinberg, 1963.
The Orion Nebula is one of the closest stellar regions to the Earth. Using parallax measurements, it has been estimated that this nebula is only 1,500 light years away. In addition, the Orion Nebula is a relatively young star cluster, with an approximate age of less than one million years. It has even been speculated that some of the younger stars within the cluster are only 300,000 years old.
The Sun is a huge, bright sphere that is mostly made up of gas that is about 5 billion years old. The Sun is the closest to the Earth, it is 145 million km distant (this distance is called an Astronomical Unit). The next closest star is 300,000 times further away. There are probably millions of similar stars in the Milky Way galaxy (and even more galaxies in the Universe), but the Sun is the most important to us because it supports life on Earth.
Outer space according to Dictionary.com is defined as "the physical universe outside of the earths atmosphere". Over the entire existence of mankind we have always wondered what is out there. The moon is one object that many people have always fathomed about. The moon is fathomed about in 3 aspects. These aspects include facts including theories the formation of the moon, the great space race, and wether or not the first moon landing was a hoax.