Image source: Duluth News Tribune
Entering the Winter Sky
This is the time to watch the annual Leonid meteor showers. They will peak this week; I am definitely keeping my schedule open to stay up late and watch the evening of the 17-18 after midnight! The best way is to be on a reclining lawn chair out in a really dark spot where you have broad expanses of sky to scan. Sharing the experience with a group of friends who are looking off in opposite directions will afford more sightings. The waning Moon should not be a problem if you are away from city lights; the meteors should be bright and offer exciting viewing. Keep hoping for clear skies and less light pollution!
If you are out about 10 PM and looking east for some reason, the red eye of Taurus the Bull, Aldebaran, is now visible. Be sure to notice the faint delicate group of stars above Aldebaran that form the cluster called the Pleiades. Rising about an hour later, Orion the Hunter is now in the night sky instead of the early morning of August!
If you have dark skies where you live you might enjoy scanning the region in the north between the Bears (big and little dipper asterisms) and Boötes, the herdsman whose stars form a crooked kite. Draco the dragon is lurking there and possible to discern with no light pollution on a clear night. Draco’s head is pentagon of stars near Boötes, with the long scaly tail twisting between the Big and Little Dippers. One bright star in the tail is called Thuban and was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. About five thousand years ago Thuban was the North Star. instead of Polaris. Since the Earth wobbles like a top the pole star varies over a long period of time.
The northern part of the sky has a wonderful group of constellations that have been designated as such for thousands of years. Surrounding Polaris, our current North Star, are multiple mythical characters depicting the same themes we currently have in our entertainment. Jealousy, envy, revenge, sorrow, joy, and true love with a brave bold hero, Perseus, and the princess he rescues, Andromeda. I am sure you can sort out the fairy tales and myths some of us still share with children and grandchildren.
Cepheus, the king of Ethiopia, and his wife, queen Cassiopeia, have a beautiful daughter whom Cassiopeia brags is more beautiful than the sea nymphs of Poseidon. Enraged, the nymphs complain furiously to Poseidon who decides to send Cetus, a sea monster, to attack anything along the seashores of Ethiopia. The only way to appease the monster, according to the Oracle, was to sacrifice Andromeda to Cetus. After considering, Cepheus ordered his daughter to be chained to a rock on the seashore. He did not figure on Perseus, fresh from killing Medusa, and riding the wonderful winged horse Pegasus, to come by in the nick of time to rescue Andromeda using Medusa’s snake-hair coils to turn Cetus to stone. Of course, Perseus married Andromeda and they lived happily ever after. And all of the main characters are celebrated in the constellations named after them.
The stars of Andromeda stream out from the star Alpheratz in Pegasus, which star used to be identified as first base when referring to the constellation as the baseball diamond. Three pairs of stars swing up from Alpheratz with the Andromeda Galaxy, also labeled the Great Galaxy, M31 near the bend of the V they form. With a clear dark sky, it may be seen without optical aids.
M31 is one of the largest galaxies known, more than half again the size of our Milky Way and the Milky Way is one-hundred-thousand light-years side to side. The center is made up of old red and yellow giant stars while the spiral arms are filled with gas and dust and many hot young blue stars. Estimations are that several hundred million sun-size stars rotate around the central core. To think about the size using a model, Chet Raymo suggests it would take ten thousand boxes of salt to have as many grains of salt as there are stars in the Andromeda Galaxy and the salt would have to be spread out over an area the size of the Moon’s orbit.
I hope to meet some of you at the Brownsville Turkey Trot event this Saturday, November 22 in the early morning at the intersection of McAllen Road and Morrison Road. The South Texas Astronomical Society and its many friends and supporters are working hard to make it a fun event for you. The funds raised all go to support scholarships for high school seniors intending to study a STEM field.
Until next week, DO let some stars get in your eyes and KLU. carolutsinger@att.net
