Saturn has returned to our central Ohio sky at last. No astronomical sight is more breathtaking, even in a small telescope, than Saturn’s celestial hat brim. Around 10 p.m., look for the ringed planet low in the southeastern sky as a yellow point of light.
Look straight south in the early evening, and you’ll see the familiar constellation Orion high in the sky. Above Orion, to the northeast, the constellation Gemini, the Twins, will be easily visible.
Here’s a deceptively simple question we recently got at Perkins Observatory: Do the stars move?Not too long ago, asking such questions got you burned at the stake. These days I can give the answer in the newspaper. Yes, they move, but not in the way you might think. Much of the motion we see is illusory.
Ah, autumn. There’s a nip in the air, and practically every local radio and television station, newspaper, and coworker hanging out at the water cooler is talking about the plight of OSU football. As I think of the upcoming game with that “team up north” (and I try not to think about it much, truth be told), my mind turns to thoughts of … binary stars. So I’m an astro-nerd. Sue me.
The experienced stargazer will recognize the star numbered “61” in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan, almost immediately. The beginner seems to have absolutely no reason at all to seek it out. This relatively faint point of light is, after all, not one of the constellations on the imaginary lines that identify the Swan’s shape. Why bother?
The Milky Way, our galaxy, is one of hundreds of billions (or trillions — who knows?) of tiny islands of stars sprinkled throughout the vast cosmic ocean of space. Seen from the top, galaxies are often shaped like flat spirals — children’s pinwheels of uncountable stars. Seen from the side, galaxies look much like lenses bulging at the center and tapering to points at the edges. Most of a galaxy’s stars are spread throughout the lens-like structure, the galaxy proper.