Saturday: How
do you study the life cycle of a dog? Easy. Get a dog from the animal shelter,
care for it for 15 years and study it. How do you study the life cycle of a
star? Easy. Pick a star, watch it for a few billion years, and…. Wait a minute.
Astronomers can’t observe something for a few billion years. Instead, they
study stars that are at different points in their long life cycle and piece
together the information from those different stars. What they do is like
studying a one-year-old dog for a few minutes, then studying a different
two-year-old dog for a few minutes, and so on. The sky in and near the
constellation Orion provides an example of four objects at different points of
star life.
First,
find Rigel, the bright star in the lower right corner of the constellation
Orion. This star, rapidly burning its fuel for a high energy but short-lived
existence, is three and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due
south at 10 p.m. It was not, is not, and never will be like our Sun. However, about
one fist up and to the left are the three objects of Orion’s sword holder. The
middle “star” is really a star-forming region called the Orion nebula. There
you’ll find baby Suns. Now, look about two fists to the right and one fist down
from Rigel. You should be looking at a star that is about one tenth as bright
as Rigel but still the brightest in its local region. The third star to the
right of that star is Epsilon Eridani, the most Sun-like close and bright star.
Betelgeuse, in the upper left corner of Orion, is a star at the end of its life
that started out life a bit larger than the Sun.
Sunday:
Do you see a hunter when you look at Orion? Betelgeuse and the bright star one
fist to the right of it are the broad shoulders of the hunter. Rigel and Saiph,
the bright star to the left of Rigel, represent the knees. The Maya saw the equilateral triangle
formed by Rigel, Saiph, and the left-most belt star as the “Three Stones of the
Hearth”. The Orion Nebula is in the center of the hearth and it represents the
flame, called K’ak.
Monday: Star
Wars: The Force Awakens with its strangely shaped light saber is showing in theaters.
The awakened force of a star is showing in the Orion B molecular cloud complex.
When stars form, gas and dust is gravitationally pulled in and jets of
energized gas shoot out its poles. The Hubble Space Telescope has taken images
of twin jets that resemble Darth Maul’s double bladed light saber in Star Wars
Episode 1. For more information about this star, along with more marginally
accurate references to Star Wars, go to http://goo.gl/zOyZYb.
Tuesday: Jupiter
is one fist above the east horizon
Wednesday:
January is the coldest month of the year so it is time to turn up the furnace.
Fornax the furnace is one fist above due south at 7 p.m.
Thursday: Are
you a morning person? Good, because you’ll see quite a show in the morning sky
from January 20 to February 20. All five naked eye planes will be visible
before sunrise. Even now, you can see four of the five naked eye planets.
Jupiter is three fists above the southwest horizon. Mars is three fists above
the south horizon. Venus, the brightest planet, is more than one fist above the
southeast horizon. Saturn is a half a fist to the upper right of Venus. In
about a week, Mercury will move out of the glare of the Sun and join it’s
fellow planets in the morning sky.
Friday:
Sirius, the brightest star in the nighttime sky, is two and a half fists above
due south at 11:15 p.m.
The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.
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