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What was it?

Dale

Last Friday night (8th oct) i was camping with a few mates in a local park (dont ask why), but while a few of them got all randy i thought i'd step out of the tent and sit on the bench and look at the sky, and no word of a lie in like 5 minutes I saw 3 shooting stars, and notices a hell of a lot of patterns of stars. There was one where there are 3 stars in a vertical line and some shaped like the letter P.

Anyway while i was looking up I could just about see a few stars, but it was more like a small cluster of dust with faint stars in it. I wondered what it was and just thought it was stars far away, but could someone please tell me what it was. Oh and there was no clouds in the sky, it was a really clear night.

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galactus

Yeah, Friday night was nice and clear!

The three stars in a line and the "small cluster of dust with faint stars in it" sounds like Orion. Which way were you facing? South?

Probably not the best link on Orion but here goes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28constellation%29

Seanie M

Dale wrote:

there are 3 stars in a vertical line

some shaped like the letter P.

it was more like a small cluster of dust with faint stars in it.

Sounds like you saw Orions Belt, not sure what the P is, and perhaps your dusty small cluster was The Plaiedes, or Seven Sisters?

Seanie.

SpaceJunkie

Agreed on Orion's Belt (3 stars in a row). Orion is one of the most recognizable of constelleations. The Big Dipper (Ursa Major) is a close second.

Agreed on The Seven Sisters (Plaiedes). They both occupy the same general area of sky.

The "P" is a challenge though. With so many stars making so many complex patterns, finding a "P" would be child's play...LOL.

It would help if we knew which direction and approx angle above the horizon he was viewing at the time. Oh, yeah! And the approximate time!

BTW, a good approximation for elevation angle is a closed fist helt out at arm's length. The height of the closed fist approximates about 10 degrees of elevation.

Seanie M: The computer specs are just folks bragging...LOL.

Flukey

3 stars in a row could be almost anywhere, but Orion is definitely a good candidate. It is still late enough when it is rising, though that would appear to fit in with this case. The Orion Nebula would fit in with the cloud of dust. The Pleiades could look like a dust cloud to the untrained eye. There is a sort of P Shape of stars near Mintaka, though I doubt that what he was looking at in this instance.

Orion:

SpaceJunkie

One of the best things about the Orion Constellation besides its ease in being located by even the most inexperianced stargazer is that it contains two interesting objects: The Orion Nebula and the Horsehead Nebula. These are two beautiful objects!

Dale

Flukey wrote:

Orion:

Yeah, thats what i saw... decent

Seanie M

Have we established what the P was?

Seanie.

galactus

Don't have enough to go on really but if Dale was looking south perhaps Taurus. Could be Hydra or Ursa Major as well. Could be anything...
:rolleyes:

Flukey

Spacejunkie, don't forget the Witch Head Nebula near Rigel, which illuminates it. It is actually in Eridanus but Rigel is the best place to start looking for it from.

SpaceJunkie

I actually had to look this one up.

IC 2118 is a "Reflection Nebula" meaning it is visible only because of the light it reflects from a nearby source (Rigel in this case). Besides its peculiar shape, that of a Witch's face in profile, it is not as visually stunning as the other objects in or near Orion. Check out her nose! LOL.

Also, because of its nature, it is a bit more difficult to see without sophisticated instuments. Most backyard astronomers will not be able to find it. I don't think it can be seen with binoculars but I have not tried so I'm not sure.

Still, it was worth mentioning. Thanks!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/9802/witchhead_gg.jpg

Another object which is of interest is IC 418 also called the Spirograph Nebula. It is a Planetary Nebula and can be found just below Orion almost exactly between Orion and Lepus.

Flukey

I woke up just after 6am on Sunday morning. I could see the sky outside my bedroom window so I got up to have a better look. My bedroom faces south and looking out at a beautiful clear sky there, in all its glory, was Orion. It is always a fabulous sight. Looking up I could see Castor and Pollux and below them was Saturn. Out to my left, high in the East, shining gloriously below Leo, was Venus. I grabbed my little camcorder and pointed it in that direction. I took these two frames from the brief footage that I shot:

Further down, just rising over the horizon I could see Jupiter. On November 5th Venus and Jupiter will be very close to each other, which should be some sight. In the coming months Orion, the finest constellation in the sky, will be rising earlier and earlier each night. With those planets on view too, it is something for all astronomers to look forward to.

Dale

Its amazing that we can see that far!

Flukey

SpaceJunkie, I found it with my Celestron Firstcope 70 a few years ago. I didn't know what it was for a long time as I couldn't find it in any of the books I have or other articles on Orion. It is small, but with a telescope, if you are looking at Rigel and panning around in that area, you will see it. Once you know it is there, you can pick it up with binoculars, though only just about.

Dale, light is coming towards us so we can see them, but not as they are. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second or about 300,000 kilometre per hour. Most of what we see is light that has left those stars a long time ago. It takes about 8 minutes for light to reach us from the sun. We measure some of these distances in light years, which is the distance light travels in a year. That is about 9.46 million, million kilometres or about 5.87 million, million miles. Another measurement used by astronomers is a Parsec which is about 3.46 light years.

The next nearest star after the sun is Proxima Centauri. It's light takes over 4 years to reach us. It is not a very bright star to look at. The brightest star in the night sky as we see it is Sirius. It is easy to find. When Orion has risen to its height, if you follow the line of the three central stars pointing down to the left, you will see Sirius. It's light takes about 8 years to get to us. The light of most stars you see left them centuries ago or millenia ago, so you are only seeing them as they were then.

Stars are very different in many ways. In the coming months Orion will be rising earlier and earlier. It is a good constellation to see different things in. Many people think of stars all being white. If you look at Betelgeuse carefully, the star at the top left of Orion, you will see it is a reddish colour. This is in contrast to Rigel at the bottom right corner, which is a whiter colour, as is Sirius. If you follow the line of Orion's belt the other way it points up toward Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus. It, like Betelgeuse, is a red star. There are all sorts of wonders in the sky to be seen, if you look carefully, even with the naked eye. Sirius and Aldebaran aren't in the photo, but you can easily the contrast between Betelgeuse and Rigel.

If you don't already own a pair, get yourself some binoculars and have a good look at Orion and other constellations and planets in the clear nights to come over the winter. A pair of 10 by 50s are ideal. It will show you so much more than the naked eye. Hopefully we may have aroused a bit of interest in astronomy for you. Get a good pocket star atlas and you'll have everything to get started. You won't regret it.

SpaceJunkie

As Flukey mentions, stars are thought by most folks as being white mainly because we often "scan" the heavens for whatever reason and don't stop to really "look" at them. The fact is that stars can be whiteish, blueish, yellowish or redish. The subtilties between the white, blue and yellow stars are hard to decern with the naked eye because of the huge distances which make the star look little more then a dot in the night sky.

But the red stars are just a bit more easy to see, not because they are any closer but mostly because they are much larger relative to the other stars. These "red" stars are often 50 to 100 times larger then their blue, white and yellow counterparts. Known as "red giant" stars, they are near the end of their life having nearly exhausted their hydrogen fuel and in some cases began the process of fusing helium into heavier elements.

Remember that a star's size and energy output is a delicate balance between gravity which tries to crush the star into the area of a pinhead and its energy output which tries to blow the star apart. As long as the two forces remain balanced (billions of years) the star remains stable and it warms whatever planetary bodies it has orbiting around it.

This transition process from hydrogen fusion to helium fusion causes a dramatic increase in output energy which pushes the outer layers of the star much farther away from its center and its apparent size increases many many times but again a balance is achieved. Aldebaran and Betelguese are "red giant" stars and some astrophysicists believe they could be nearing their supernova stage. If this happens within our lifetime, we will be in for one of the most wonderful astonomical events ever witnessed- a star so bright that it lights up the night sky nearly as bright as daytime on Earth.

Just as a matter of interest: The largest star I know of is called 72 Leo (HD 97778 or HIP 54951) which is a red giant star a meer 660 times the radius of our sun. If it were our sun, we (Earth) would be inside it as would Mars and its surface would nearly reach Jupiter.

Optikus

my eyes hurt.

SpaceJunkie

LOL. Is that better?

SpaceJunkie

SpaceJunkie wrote:

...Aldebaran and Betelguese are "red giant" stars...

Correction: My bad! I was thinking of Antares (not Aldebaran). Odd that I would mix those two up since Antares is a major star in my birth constellation of Scorpio. My most sincere apologies for the error.

Aldebaran is a large star approx. 32x larger then our sun, but it is a yellow main sequence star and not a red giant. However, Antares is a red giant very similar to Betelgeuse. Both are over 500 times larger then our sun.

On another subject: If you would like to travel amongst the stars like Captain Kirk and the Starship "Enterprise" and do it in 3 Dimensions, I would recommend a "free" program called Celestia. It is a 3D space simulator that will allow you to view and study the stars, planets and moons close up (if you wish). It's by far the best "free" program I have ever seen. It uses up-to-date hi-res (direct-x) technology to display the stars and planets and requires a somewhat modern computer system to run but it is well worth it. You can find out more about Celestia and its requirements at:
http://shatters.net/celestia/

Oh, did I mention it was free?

Here are some sample screens but due to the limitations of this board, they do not do the real images justice...

Flukey

I downloaded Celestia. I am not overly impressed, but I suppose it takes getting used to. I checked the facility to show upcoming eclipses, but it did not list this week's one.

SpaceJunkie

Yes, it does take a little getting used to but the controls are available in the main folder as a text file, I believe. If you are having trouble with a particular function, maybe I can help.

The Eclipse Finder worked pretty well for me. I got dates for 5 eclipses between 27 Oct 03 and 27 Oct 05.

08 Nov 03
04 May 04
28 Oct 04
24 Apr 05
17 Oct 05

Here's what I did:
1.) Opened the Eclipse Finder
2.) Selected: Find "Moon" eclipse on "Earth"
3.) Entered: From "27 Oct 2003" to "27 Oct 2005"
4.) Clicked "Compute" (Got the above list)
5.) Clicked the 28 Oct 04 entry on the list.
6.) Clicked "Set Date and Go to Planet" (Went to the moon on that date)

Below are the screens I got...

SpaceJunkie

I also got this sequence of images for the beginning, mid-event & ending. Note that the times shown are relative to my location.

SpaceJunkie

I have found the following controls to be the most useful at the beginning as you get used to it:

Left Mouse (hold) = Moves the image around (view direction)
Right Mouse (hold) = Allows you to "Orbit" your target object to see it a different angles.
Both Mouse (hold) = Allows zoom in/out & rotation of screen as the mouse is moved forward/back & left/right respectively.

, = Decreases Field of View
. = Increases Field of View

h = home Sets your target back to Sol whereever you may be in the universe.

g= Go "Go"s to whatever your target is as selected from a list or entered manually in the Navigation tab.

c = center Centers your target object on the screen.

l = +Timescale Increases how fast time passes and how fast objects move.
k = -Timescale Decreases how fast time passes and how fast objects move.
j = Time Toggle Toggles between Time Forward & Time Reverse.

/ = Toggles Con Lines on/off
o = Toggles Orbit Paths on/off

Arrow keys = Rotates the screen view horizontally/vertically

[ or ] = Change Magnitude limit

These are the ones I use the most. All the other controls may become useful under certain circumstances but not used all the time.

Did I mention it was free?