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MIB
B.V. VIP - Contributor
Joined: Oct 02, 2001
Posts: 42279
Location: Innsmouth
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 Posted: Sat Aug 24, 2002 12:44 am Post subject: Three Small Constellations: The Dolphin, the Fox and the Arr |
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Between and around the three great constellations of the Summer Triangle (Lyra, the Harp; Cygnus, the Swan, and Aquila, the Eagle), there are three little ones.
One of the smallest constellations is reaching its highest point in the sky now: Delphinus, the Dolphin. It certainly attracted the attention of ancient watchers of the sky, for despite its tiny size and the fact that it only consists of faint stars, they’re so closely spaced that they are easily seen on dark, clear nights.
Here you will find a small diamond with perhaps one or two stars below it. There is something especially charming about it, positioned out in the dark just east of the bright summer Milky Way. Some reference books refer to the diamond as \"Job’s Coffin,\" though the origin of this name is unknown.
Two stars in Delphinus have rather odd names: Sualocin and Rotanev. They first appeared in the Palermo Star Catalogue in 1814, but nobody seemed to have a clue as to their origin. The English Astronomer Thomas Webb finally solved the mystery by reversing their letters, revealing the name of Nicolaus Venator, the Latinized form of Niccolo Cacciatore, the valued assistant and eventual successor of Palermo Observatory’s Director Giuseppe Piazzi.
To this day, however, nobody knows whether it was Piazzi or Cacciatore himself who ultimately christened these two stars.
On most star charts Vulpecula, the Little Fox, seems to be nothing more than a formless splattering of dim stars. But the late Hugh Rice, who used to work at the Hayden Planetarium, showed part of this group on his star maps as something resembling a cowboy boot. The boot even boasted a spur that many cowboys wear.
Involving mostly faint stars, Rice’s pattern ironically doesn’t include this constellation’s brightest, Alpha Vulpeculae. The average visual magnitude of the twelve stars that compose the boot is 5.0, so when all the stars in this celestial shoe are visible with the unaided eye, the sky is transparent and your observing conditions excellent -- you have little light pollution.
Sighted in wide-field binoculars or a telescope’s viewfinder, Rice’s pattern helps us locate the beautiful Dumbbell Nebula (M27). Picked up with a very low power telescope as two hazy patches of light, it assumes a dumbbell appearance in larger telescopes.
Unlike Vulpecula, which was invented by Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) in the 17th century, nearby Sagitta, the Arrow, is one of the original 48 ancient constellations, with four stars assigned to it by Eratosthenes (276-195 BC). Once its shape becomes familiar, you should have no trouble sighting it.
The mythology of the Arrow is confusing; it is thought to be the arrow shot by Hercules. By its orientation among the stars is seems somewhat uncertain whether Hercules was aiming for the Fox, the Eagle or the Swan, but it really doesn’t matter, since he missed them all!
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/little_constellations_020823.html |
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