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The Night Sky Podcast | Winter Hexagon And The Big Dipper Myth
Hello, and thank you for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast. My name is Billy Newman. And I’m Marina Hansen. And this week, we’re gonna be speaking about a few of the upcoming skywatching events that will be happening in the night sky above us for the first and second week of February 2016. How are you doing, Marina? I’m doing well. That’s cool. You know, it’s been cool the last the last couple days, because we’re fortunate on the west coast, we’ve, we’ve had a bit of clear weather, finally, yeah, pushed all the way through January, with all the rain and stuff that we’ve had kind of that El Nino year coming through, where we get the big rainstorm every week or so coming off of the east side of the earth, excuse me, the west end of the Pacific Ocean blows all the way across over Hawaii kind of comes over. It’s the West Coast has been slamming us for like the last 45 days or so. So it’s kind of like that weather pattern for the West Coast at least to get that little break in like the first second or third week of February, where you get this little fall spring, you get the first few blooms of the flowers, that sort of thing all through Valentine’s Day. It’s kind of that I think part of the Mediterranean climate, sort of that same system that they have on the right and Europe also. But so that’s a nice opportunity for us to have a chance to go out and look at some of the night sky stuff that we’ve been talking about. Like last week, when we spoke a lot about the five planets being up. We’ve had mercury kind of pass its its high point. And now it’s going to be resting back down to the sun. So it’s cool, because this week, we have the opportunity to go out and see that because it’s been a little bit more clear.
Right, it’s been nice having some fake spring to get to look at things
a little bit of like spring. Yeah, I guess a lot of the people in the more arid climates might have the benefit of having a few more days of clear sky. I mean, even over in band, like on the other side of the rain shadow of the Cascades. I think they’d have a better opportunity or I think they have like, what, 270 clear days a year? That’s right. Yeah, there’s a lot of places that probably do a bit better than the Willamette Valley. Yeah, pretty socked in with fog. Yeah, can be. So that’s the thing we have to look out for is the fog. But if we get up to the top of a mountain or and which I want to do with you, I want to do some observations up at a higher elevation just to kick us outside of the morning fog that we’re gonna get here around the Willamette River.
Yeah, I’d like to do an early trip out with our telescope.
I think that’d be a great time to, I think it’d be cool too, because if we’re out early enough, it’ll be dark enough that we can we can make observations of all the planets that are out too. I think we should try and shoot for that for for some time, in the in the next couple days. Oh, it’d be cool. I’d really like to Yeah, we should plan on it before the weeks over. I think it’d be pretty fun. Who knows how long this fake spring? I know, it seems like it’s only going to be another two or three days. I think what we’ve got going on right now is a new moon, we’re just looking at the crescent moon out the window before it’s set behind the horizon. That’s right. It’s looking really nice. Yeah. And so it’s the start of the Chinese New Year, which, which is like based on the lunar calendar system. And so I think that started yesterday at the start of the new moon. It’s really interesting, I think we’re gonna look into more stuff about lunar calendars and about how that that whole system works, and how we switched over from a lunar calendar system to a lunar solar calendar, or just how we still have a relationship to the to the lunar cycle to be fun to talk about.
Right? Yeah, I’m looking forward to doing a little bit more research on that. Yeah, I
think it’d be cool. I think that the biggest, the biggest thing, or I think one of the best things to be seen in the night sky during February, is, is we talked a lot before about asterisms. And so asterisms, to kind of start off the conversation about it. asterisms aren’t constellations, even though they’re probably really similarly matched in the ideas of what we have about patterns of stars in the sky. And so an asterism is a common, a commonly known pattern of stars in the night sky. That’s not a qualified constellation. One of the 88 constellations that’s identified by the International Astronomical Union are one of the 48 classical constellations that was identified by by Ptolemy, in ancient Greece, which I think is like all of the Northern constellations, because they’re in Greece, so they didn’t have the understanding of being able to circumnavigate the globe yet. So a lot of the Southern Hemisphere stars, those are all named after the 1500s after the explorers started to head out and head south, and they needed like, tools to navigate the southern sky. That’s right. Yeah, it’s interesting. So there’s only stars or ancient star names only go down so far to the south, I think. I think since a lot of the star constellations were identified. In Arabic, I think they go as far down as I can Opus, I think that’s still an old star name. there’s a there’s a handful of others anything down to the equator that you can see, I think that’s pretty well identified. But since there weren’t really many classical civilizations that we pull a lot of history from, that are really developed in the southern hemisphere. We don’t have a lot of really old history from the southern hemisphere, which is kind of interesting. Have you noticed The age of the different star names the age of the language that’s used for it. This is interesting. Yeah, so there’s a lot of asterisms that fall outside of the constellation names that have been identified or a lot of the patterns of the stars that we see in the night sky. They’re really more closely related to asterisms, than they are the more technical definition of the cubic space that’s taken up, or the square space in the sky that’s taken up by the constellation of constellations were a good way to identify deep sky objects, where they make the kind of blocked out an area of the sky. And any item that sort of that any astronomical item, any deep sky object that’s identified in that constellation space is identified under that constellation. So for example, the Andromeda galaxy is in the constellation of Andromeda. And so it’s a classification system so that they can they can mark deep sky objects by what constellation they’re in. That’s interesting. Yeah, it is interesting. And so that’s kind of the constellation system, and constellations are great for, I guess, understanding a lot of the mapping of the sky. It helps out a lot. But there’s a few things like if we were going to talk about I guess an easy one to talk about would be like the Pleiades. the Pleiades is not a constellation, even though everyone knows, even though it’s probably one of the most popular, visible items in the night sky. And I think that it’s just part of the constellation of Taurus, a lot of the times it’s noted to be the tale of Taurus like the the V, where all Tiburon is, is the head the the horns of the ball. And then the Pleiades is supposed to be the tough to the tail on the back end of the bowl. But uh, Ryan’s fighting, but then there’s this other mythology I think that maybe we talked about a little bit where I think Orion is fighting Taurus the ball, who is stolen, or is kidnapped the Seven Sisters of like his, his love. So it’s like the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, as it’s identified in some, some mythology, right? So it’s kind of identified as a separate entity or the separate idea, but it wasn’t really included in the constellation naming. So it’s considered an asterism. Other asters of Go ahead.
I was gonna ask, are asterisms always a part of another constellation? Or have a constellation? Or is that not necessary?
You know, that’s not necessarily true in all cases, because so like we noticed in this, every element of the sky, is blocked into an asteroid, or excuse me, is blocked into a constellation, where we’re able to map the sky, based on the amount of square cubic space that’s taken up within the, the outline of the sky above us. But for an asterism and asterism construct across multiple constellations. So on the south, there’s the Southern Cross, which is an asterism of some of the bright stars in the Milky Way during the summer months that identifies this cross that kind of points due north during the winter. It’s sort of a directional finder that I think a lot of the explorers used to identify a position of North when you hit the southern hemisphere, and you’re not able to identify the pole stars anymore, like we’re able to in the Northern Hemisphere that we get to see. That’s cool. I didn’t know that one. Yeah. And then in the summer sky, we get to see the the Summer Triangle, which is the one that that comes up overhead of Vega, Deneb. And Altair, it’s one of the early sets of bright first magnitude stars that that young sky watchers or astronomers start to learn. And those are in three different constellations. I think all of them being being birds, or you know, I think it’s like lira, and another one that’s out there, Cygnus. And so it’s kind of interesting how that works out separated. And so in the winter sky, what we’re able to see and I think it’s probably one of the best ones, or one of the best opportunities to see is the winter hexagon. And we met and talked about it a little bit before. This is like you were talking about an asterism that really stretches across and includes every bright first magnitude star in in the spiral grouping in the southern sky during the winter. And it’s a really great place to view just a big section of those bright first magnitude stars.
Yeah, it is a cool a read that it’s the biggest asterism
Yeah, it probably is it really stretches over a huge part of the sky. And so the stars that it includes being called the winner, hexagon, the general shape of the sky supposed to be kind of a large hexagon shape. I’ve heard it also called that was sort of a G shape or spiral shape in the sky. But what you do to identify the stars of it, and I can go through pretty quick is if you look straight up or kind of near the zenith of the sky in the north northern hemisphere, you can identify the star Capella. And so that’s a real bright star we see it come up in the fall like in October it’s I think in some areas, it’s kind of identified as like a an onset of fall or an onset of October is when you start seeing in like late August and September later in the night you’re gonna see Capella start rising in the the north eastern sky. And then at this time of year as it rises Up to the zenith point of the sky, it’s going to be right overhead, you’re going to see Capella. And then as you drop down in the spiral, you’re going to see Castor and Pollux in the constellation of Gemini. And then and so that’s in the ecliptic line. And then below Castor and Pollux, you’ll see the star proceeding, which is in qeynos minor. And so that’s the little dog or the small dog. And then we’ll see serious below that, which is in qeynos major, the the big dog star, and then pass that we’re going to drop down into the constellation of Orion. And at the base of Orion, we’re going to see this bright blue star. And that’s the star Rigel. And so I think that’s like a blue supergiant. It’s really cool. It’s cool stuff around. It’s a cool constellation because it has so many different varied stars in it like there’s the red giant Beetlejuice, which you can see in a second. And then there’s like the super bright and super large blue giant star. That’s, that’s Rigel. So Rachel’s in the in the winter hexagon. And then up from that, we get to Oliver on in the constellation of Taurus, and then that drops straight back down to the head, or the top of the constellation of Orion, where we see we see battle Jews or Beetlejuice, as it’s often often called, but But yeah, that kind of completes the the collection of all those bright, first 92 stars in the winter hexagon.
That’s cool. That’s a really big one. And it’s pretty easy to find.
Yeah, and the great thing about the one a hexagon, the reason that it’s important, or that it’s worthwhile to know, see, it identifies just a lot of this first magnitude stars, the brightest stars in the night sky, and probably the brightest stars of the Winter Collection. or seeing, you know, just the stars that come up during the winter time, that are interesting to observe. It’s, it’s a big collection of those stars all kind of congregated into one location to the sky. And so this kind of collection is just a real easy way to be able to identify or locate these six, bright and significant stars in the night sky. So I think this time between between February and the end of April, is probably the best time to get to get good viewing and of the winter hexagon, or the heavenly G or the heavenly spiral these, this collection of the stars, you can see these first magnitude stars that kind of spiral out in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s cool, though, if we were to think about this a little bit, and we were to go back, or we were to go toward the southern hemisphere. Culturally, we wouldn’t really maybe recognize the winter hexagon as prominently. Because as we move just a little bit further south, there’s a few other first magnitude stars really bright stars that would be showing up in our night sky. So we probably add that to the asterism that would be kind of looking at or making note of. So if we go just a little bit further south, just below the horizon that we see in the Northern Hemisphere, is one of the brightest stars of the Southern Hemisphere, which is called canopus. And it’d be really cool. I’m excited to see it if we ever get a chance to if we go for far enough south, you know, on the equatorial line, we’d be able to see cannabis, which is really one of the brightest stars I think it I think it’s about let’s see, what would it be? It probably be real close to about as bright as procyon and the night sky, Percy and Rachel, it probably be pretty similar to that. But that in conjunction with Sirius all there with with Capella, if we were there, down by the equator, I think it would definitely be a really bright component of the night sky. There’s a few other stars down there at the southern sky that are also pretty bad. But I think I think cannabis is the brightest one in the winter sky in the southern hemisphere. That’s cool. If you really need to see some time. It’s really cool. And the reason I love to go to the southern hemisphere, in fact, I’m really hoping that like even from Hawaii, you can identify canopus, but I’m not really sure yet. I think that it’s interesting to find out. Yeah, I’m not really sure. I think that it’s far enough South that you could be able to identify In fact, I hear that cannabis can be seen by like, I think if you’re in the far southern section of the United States, you can see just a bit more into the southern hemisphere. And I’m pretty sure that that some of those stars are available to be seen in the night sky. It’d be really cool to get a chance to see it. I’d like to do it. Now the other thing that’s really interesting about this the reason that there’s this collection is asters and that we see of the winter hexagon is because as we look up, we’re looking into the Milky Way right now. So when we look at overhead, and we look into Capella, we look into procyon and Castor and Pollux and Sirius, and all Oberon and battle Jews and Rigel, all those stars are kind of in this line, and toward canopus past, past the horizon into the South. All of that’s in the line of the Milky Way. And so all those are kind of in this denser part of, of main sequence stars except for battle Jews and all the baronne because they’re both red giants and older stars. But all of this bright blue stars that are in the pocket of the Milky Way, those are all these main sequence stars that are burning this really bright blue color It’s really interesting, it’s cool to see him. And it’s just cool that they’re, they’re all they’re kind of in that area, then what we’ll notice is that out from that out from that kind of main cluster of stars that we see brightly, or we’re gonna see, to the south, or seeming to the east into the West, is going to be just a lot of like, more empty space. And that’s as we’re looking outside of the galaxy outside the flat pancake and the spiral galaxy that we are looking kind of into into the thick of as we look up into the night sky and into what we know it as the winter hexagon. That’s really neat. Yeah, it’s really cool. So there’s a few other asterisms that are out there. I think that the biggest one, the one that every kid learns the one that has gone back 1000s and 1000s of years into the culture of human beings is the Big Dipper. And that’s the one that we’ve done a little bit of research on. And I wanted to talk with you about that on the podcast tonight. But the Big Dipper is a cool one. It’s a it’s seven stars, and it goes back for like 1000s of years. Right? We read about that? Not very much.
It’s interesting. There’s, there’s context for the there’s context for the Big Dipper for the last 13,000 years of recorded history, or there’s at least this perception that there may have been an oral tradition that was passed around through the North American. I don’t know, I don’t know if it would be cultures or tribes. I don’t know how it translate. But it seems like it made it over into the Native American cultures into the United States also, that there’s this oral history of being considered a bear, which is sort of strange. And I guess the reason that it’s brought up is that well, I know you helped me explain this a little bit. It’s strange that there’s, I don’t know, 14 1617 cultures that are 1000s and 1000s of miles apart, all across the northern hemisphere. And both Europe and Asia and North America. But all separately have identified this collection of seven stars that we know today is the Big Dipper as being a bear. And so there’s really no correlation to that, you know, it doesn’t necessarily look like a bear even though it bears a prominent. I don’t know, a prominent animal in North America, you know, it would be it’d be something that humans would have had to have interacted with in Europe, Asia and North America. But it’s interesting that there’s so many identifications of this constellation of this asterism as being a bear.
That is really interesting. It’s really interesting. Also, because the cons are the asterism. The Big Dipper is in the constellation. Ursa Major. Yeah. Which is a bear.
Yeah, which is a bear. And so that’s, I think, the the dominant idea. So that’s sort of a part of it is that it’s a little muddy, because there’s a big dipper, but the Big Dipper is a bear, and whatever kind of loose Association, that is, to these other cultures that have identified that same grouping as being a bear is sort of that unknown connection. It’s like, how did how did these Native American tribes in North America have this oral history of being a bear? And then how did the Russians have this oral tradition of being a bear and the Europeans have this tradition of being a bear? It’s just really strange how it is. There’s a few other identities that the that it’s had over time,
right? Like, a wagon, I think. Yeah, like, what is this thing like for crops? I can’t remember. But yeah, like a wagon? I think in the UK. Yes. It’s identified.
Yeah, there are a few things and there’s a lot of mythology to it, too. I think the, the Ursa Major mythology is, is like a Roman mythology that’s been passed down. And so it was Jupiter. Had a lover like Ursa. And there, you know, there’s our nose Calista? Calista like the name of that moon and Jupiter. Oh, yeah, I was reading about that. I think that’s where it comes from, is Jupiter’s moon is Kalista. Jupiter’s lover and the mythology was named clusters. That’s sort of where that association comes from. That’s why we named those moons around Jupiter around that association of the mythology. But kalisto in this mythology in the section of the mythology was turned into a bear, right? Yeah. By Jupiter, Jupiter’s wife. Yeah. And then placed up into the night sky. Right. Yeah. And then I think that’s also part of the mythology is where are some minor the little bear comes from too? That’s right. Yeah, it’s a kallistos. Son. Yeah, so Calista sun in the mythology goes, that Calista son was going to shoot the bear. Yeah, but Jupiter. Jupiter’s way. Jupiter’s wife then turned that sign into a bear also. Yeah, so I put it and put them in the sky as constellations. constellations together. That’s interesting. Yeah, I think Juno. Sure. I think that you’re right. Yeah, I think that that’s correct. But I know that that was kind of a like an interesting thing. So So that’s kind of the North American mythology that was I don’t know if that I don’t know what the Greek mythology behind it might be, or if that was more identified, but But yeah, I think that’s kind of the connection to the Roman mythology that we sort of used today. And the International Astronomical Union’s identity of, of what Ursa Major is of the Big Bear, you know. And so I think that’s pretty cool. That that is just kind of noted is that the other like, weird thing is is like the Native American bear lore of it. And I was talking to you about this a little bit, too. It was the Native Americans. I think in Indiana, I think it’s like the Piney Indians like, yeah. I think that that’s where the this, this lore comes from. But it was a cool story, I thought this was almost a better lore than maybe a little bit of what we have. It was kind of fun. That was that the main blocks if you go out and in the night sky, even tonight, we could see it coming up in the North East right now as as the Big Dipper is kind of on its rise. So before I get too far out of the way, the Big Dipper is, as we’re in the Northern Hemisphere at the Big Dipper is one of these constellations that really never sets in the night sky, it rotates around the North Star. And if you’re far enough south, it will set into the northern sky. But as we are up in North America, and Europe and Russia, all these locations, were able to see the Big Dipper kind of rotate around the sky. And so this is why it was used in. Well, this is why it was used to identify the North Star. This is why it was used in a lot of celestial navigation that was in the past. And so for the Native Americans, this law that goes on for it is that the block of the Big Dipper. So the four stars that kind of make the big the big tub of the dipper, that is the concert that is the bear, and then the three stars that are past it, there’s a ship, they handle the makeup, the handle in in our understanding of it. Those are three hunters that we’re pursuing the bear in, in this mythology of this hunt that was going on. It’s a really cool story. I think the first one, the first star in the lineup is carrying like a bow to hunt the bear. The second star miser is carrying a pot and it’s cool because when we look at it, and we’ll get into this more in a second, miser is a double star. And so there’s an apparent star of this right next to it, it’s called Alcor and miser and Alcor are just kind of connected the real close together. And I guess part of the the Indian or the Native American mythology of this was that Alcor was like the pot that the Hunter was carrying to cook the Baron. And then the third star back was a hunter carrying wood to start the fire under the bear. Yeah, kind of fun stuff. The other cool thing I thought this was kind of a funny thing is that in the fall as the as the leaves turn red and orange in the autumn, that was as the constellation the Big Dipper, this bear was dropping low into the northern sky along the horizon. And so it was this bears blood dripping on to the land dripping onto the leaves of the trees as it would pass by and touch touch on the ground or touch the horizon line, and then cut back up into the sky. And so that was kind of their mythology that are this kind of artistic, whimsical way of understanding the the changing of the seasons. But it was probably an interesting way to keep track of it is that as the as the body the mass of the stars came close to the horizon, that’s when fall would come. That is really the identification of the change of the season. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s definitely cool does that. And I think that’s a huge part about skywatching, about just about
ethno astronomy, or I think that’s the term that I had heard that kind of, or cultural astronomy, but just sort of the understanding of how they use the stars to sort of give significance to the seasonal changes that would be important to them, how they kind of have a demarcation of what was going on or how they’re able to see what was coming next just because of the the movement of the stars above. But it’s kind of a cool little story. You know, I that was a fun little alternate lore of the Big Dipper in the, in the sky above us.
Yeah, that’s a really cool one. I like that or like, they know the changing seasons with it.
Yeah, it’s cool. I thought the little little note about the blood on the trees, sort of gory, but probably, I don’t know part of the part of the mythology that would be part of the culture at the time. So I wanted to go through a couple of the stars. So all the stars in the Big Dipper are second magnitude stars, except for one star, which I think is miguez. That’s the that’s the one that’s sort of the joint between the the cap of the dipper and then the three stars that kind of break out is the handle so that that four star on the handle or the fourth star in the cop that’s the one that’s sort of identified as a third magnet to Star Wars. All the others are a second magnitude stars. And one of the most interesting stars like we were talking about a few minutes ago is miser a miser has a lot of history to it. I think well, so miser is one that we spoke about a second ago which is doublestar with Alcor, right and I was reading that In, in, I think Arabic astronomy, it was a test of people’s eyesight. Is it that identify Alcor and miser? And yeah, there’s there’s a lot of, I guess, I don’t know what it’d be just be like proverbs that were sort of sat around Alcor, miser, and around other bright, I think it was like a man could see our core but not the full moon. It was some sort of thing about focusing on the minor minutiae and details of things, but not like the big story, the big idea or something, but yeah, just it was kind of a loose translation of something that was identified for the Arabic people. But another part of it was that in main, well, so I might get ahead of myself if I say that. It’s interesting Mizer is a pretty complicated system of stars. And so miser is one of those things, especially if you have a telescope, it’s definitely one to look at, because there’s a lot of interesting astronomy that you can do with it. So was I talking to you about this? So about double stars?
A little bit? Yeah. And this is an optical double star, right?
Yeah, it’s interesting. So there’s, there’s a couple of things. So there’s binary stars, and then there’s double stars. And the way that I understand the separation of terms even though I think they’re often cross pollenizer, and their use case in sentences is that a double star is what we see with miser and altcar or Alcor, and this is an apparent that we’ll start so when we look up in the night sky, we look at the Big Dipper and we look out to miser that second star in the handle the Big Dipper, right above it with good eyesight or with binoculars, you’re going to be able to see Alcor, the smaller star that’s a little bit more dim. And what we noticed with that, when we are nowadays with modern astronomy, we’ve been able to identify that miser is much closer than Alcor is. So there’s really no relationship gravitationally or locally between Alcor and miser, they’re not orbiting each other as what maybe you might think they might because they’re so close together and our perception the sky, that you think that spatially those two objects would be near each other. Turns out that not turns out, they’re very far away from each other. But we just see them in line with each other from our perspective and space. Yeah, this is an apparent double star.
I had read that they were a light year away. mizar and Alcor. Oh wow.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting it is. And so from there, what we find out so that’s a double star, but then there’s binary stars. And what we found out later is that miser is a binary star also where there’s miser, a and miser B are miser one and miser two something like that. But there’s these two stars they were discovered in 1617 with the onset of telescopes, so I think it was confirmed first by an astronomer, and then reconfirmed by Galileo after that to check the findings of it, but they identified, they identified a star, I think miser, one that’s in between Alcor and miser. And that was identified as a binary star to miser. And it’s really cool. So this is what did you say earlier? An optical binary? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s a term. And so it’s really interesting how that works. And this is, I think, one of the few stars that we can see this with this since it was discovered back in 1617. We’ve been tracking or monitoring the movement of that star for hundreds of years now. And so what we can see is that miser one, this binary star, this binary companion to the star miser, is actually orbiting miser. And so what we can see is that it’s orbit it the star miser, one is moving as transiting, like the space that’s around the star miser. And so I think it has like an orbit of 1000s of years. its orbit around the sun or around at Star miser is maybe 234 1000 years. Wow. Yeah. So in the last from 1617, till now, we’ve seen it make like a third of a rotation, right? It’s really strange. It’s been hundreds of years, we’ve seen it actually move in the sky. So this is something that’s called an optical binary. But then there’s these other types of binaries, like, let’s say, Sirius, I think it’s shoot, what is it gone? It’s not. It’s not one, it’s an optical binary. But I think it’s like an apparent binary. Or I might be missing my my memory right now. But it’s when you use a spectrograph. And so you look at the spectrum that’s led off by the star. So like, if we were looking at a Sirius, which is a double star, we’d end up seeing that there’s two spectral sets of information there from the redshift and blueshift of the one star kind of moving away as it’s orbiting away from us, and its orbit around the other star. And so even though we can’t really identify a specific point of light, because it’s so close to its other star, and those two stars are so far away, we’re able to see it, we’re able to pick this up because of the blue shift and red shift of the spectral lines from that second object there. So we’re able to see this wobble in the spectrograph. And that’s what’s a proof or an indicator that there’s a double star or that it’s a binary system of stars that we look out in the sky. That’s interesting. Yeah, it is really cool. So there’s a lot of astronomy that that’s proved I think, or that’s, that was proved and that was like first discovered and there’s a lot of discovery to make for amateurs too as they kind of look up and sort of have this better understanding of those items that are in the sky. But yeah, I think the connection of of miser and Alcor and then also this, this binary starts around misers. Pretty cool to look at.
Yeah, that’s really neat. I hadn’t known that the the why known that there was Alcor making it an optical binary, but I hadn’t done that. miser had another star with it also.
Yeah, that’s what’s really cool. And that was what was so strange when it was discovered and 1617. And what’s so cool now, too, is just having this records as early drawings of it being indicated. And then, and then now it having moved, like over a period of time, it’s pretty cool stuff is cool. Yeah, really fun stuff. But yeah, I think that’s a lot of the stuff of the dip. Or the other cool thing about the dipper is that the the, if you’re new to Sky watching, if you’re new to the night sky, the Big Dipper is a really important piece along with the winter hexagon that we talked about earlier, the Big Dipper is this really important asterism to kind of position yourself and identify other elements in the night sky. That’s a cool thing about it. So the front end of the Big Dipper is going to be two stars. And those stars if you kind of make a line out of them are going to point straight out to the North Star. So it’s a good way to to identify our pole star Polaris. And then at the same time, if we take the back end of the handle, and we kind of follow the arc that sort of naturally made between the stars of alioth, miser and owl CAD, how can shoot I’m not sure what the pronunciation is, but we kind of follow the natural curve that arc the sort of created in the handle the Big Dipper, what we’re going to do is we’re going to follow that arc all the way down to the star Arcturus. And so that’s kind of a good moniker to help you remember what the name of Arcturus is, is follow the arc of the different down to Arcturus. And that helps you kind of remember the name, you know, the name of the things and actors is a super bright star in the summer sky. That’s that’s out there. But yeah, it’d be cool to to get to see, you know, as the summertime comes around, but if you’re able to kind of take that on that a little bit, you’re able to kind of orient yourself around some of the things that are going on at night sky. So you can find the pole star and you can find Arcturus, just from knowing a little bit more about how the Big Dipper is set up how you can orient yourself from that.
That’s cool. Yeah, the Big Dipper is a really useful one. I think it’s that’s probably why it’s one of the first ones that that you learn about.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think the Big Dipper is one of the only constellations that’s identified in the Bible. It’s identified in a lot of like early mythology pieces.
I think it was reading that the Pleiades are also identified in the Bible.
Yeah, the Pleiades are identified and see those two are also sometimes commonly misunderstood between the both have seven stars and really essentially they are both almost the same shape. It’s cool how that that is the case for me. I remember when I was a little kid, the Pleiades looked like a really tiny, dense Dipper, isn’t it? Yeah, it looks like that little same little block that same little handle, it looks like the Big Dipper. I think for a long time. It’s, it’s misunderstood to be the Little Dipper. Because it looks like a small Dipper it was often called that and even in description to other people you say, oh, look up in Taurus for something that looks like a Little Dipper or a small. But that’s really just that collection of the Pleiades that’s out there. So yeah, it’s kind of cool. Cool to know that you know, all this or that. There’s that collection, the Pleiades and then there’s also the Big Dipper that’s kind of identified as being in both or being in just a huge amount of mythology. And yeah, so work that are out in the past. It’s pretty cool. Oh, and we got a cool comment. One of our first night sky comments, hey, yeah, I was really happy to see that. Thanks, Tony. I think it was his name. more comments are encouraging, go to night sky.io. And send us your thoughts or feedback, shoot us a review to or I don’t know, raid, or share a podcast, something like that anything to help get some people to check it out. But it’s really cool to see. Tony gave us a really informative comment about the relationship of Jupiter’s moons around Jupiter. So last week, we started talking a little bit about the early history of the understanding of Galileo’s observations of Jupiter and identifying this four primary moons that are there. And so what I wanted to correct about the statements we made last time was the largest moon and then the order the moons that are there. We had a couple questions about it. Ganymede is the largest moon that’s around, that’s around Jupiter and I believe still the largest moon in the solar system. The order the moons from the interior orbit to the exterior orbit around Jupiter first is IO that’s the closest to Jupiter. And so this is what latonia clarified in, in his email or his comment to us here. So first is IO. And so and that’s a cool thing too is IO surface is really volcanic, it’s really, it’s molten, it’s been kept really hot, and it’s closer to Jupiter, the reason that it’s still so hot, even though it’s so far out in the solar system that you think there wouldn’t be enough cyanide or solar activity to keep it that warm, is because of all the tidal friction from Jupiter. Since Jupiter is such a huge mass next to it, if you think about the way that the sun and our moon sort of affect our tides on Earth, you know what I’m talking about tides of worship, as sort of a move that happen or you know, motion that’s caused by gravitational forces from these really big, you know, heavenly bodies that are out there, you don’t really recognize how strong some of these tidal forces can be. So if you imagine that same type of tidal energy, that would be from Jupiter onto a moon, instead of the moon onto a planet like we are. And so what happens is these tidal forces as as IO orbits around Jupiter, are so intense, that it kind of sloshes the rock back and forth, like it would for us, you know, and our perception of the water being kind of washed back and forth in the tide. And so this energy, this momentum, this kind of added to the solid features of the planet, are what kind of keep it keep that friction going internally, keep the core hot, and keep the surface of it kind of active and having a lot of magma and volcanic activity. How interest Yeah, really strange how that is. And so past IO, we get into Europa, and Europa is an ice world, as we see, it’s a lot cooler. But that’s still and I think what we mentioned just briefly on that last podcast, that’s where some of those same tidal forces are what’s thought to keep the internal core of Europa, liquid water, that the movement of Europa around Jupiter’s tidal friction is keeping that internal temperature of Europa higher than it would be or higher than it would be considered, given its distance from our Sun. Instead, its heat source might be geothermal, from from its relationship. It’s tighter relationship to Jupiter. So it’s like tidal friction. So strange how that works. Really interesting stuff. So there’s Io, Europa, then Ganymede, and then Calista, that’s the order the four the four moons that are that are the primary ones, we’d see what just an average telescope, if we looked up at Jupiter tonight, which we should try and do later, it’ll be great. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. I think Jupiter comes up a little bit after nine, maybe around 10 1030 it’s definitely high enough to get a great observation of. Yeah, that’d be really cool.
Yeah, be cool. The great thing that this comment also kind of identified was that optically, when if you go out tonight, and you were to observe Jupiter, and you were to observe the four points of light that you see around Jupiter, where we notice is that the order that we see them in isn’t necessarily the order of the moons that we identify just now when we spoke about it. And that’s because the internal orbits, the exterior planets may be swinging around to the front side of Jupiter. So it’s a parent position to us. Maybe in like closer to Jupiter, even though it’s just swung outside toward us. And optically, or apparently, from our perspective, it looks closer to Jupiter, but it’s still the moon that’s further out in its orbit around the planet. So what I found out is that it’s only happens twice a month, where the moons that we see appear in the order that they are from Jupiter, from my perspective from Earth. That’s interesting. Yeah, really strange. And it kind of makes sense. I mean, if you were to think of looking out, and then seeing these objects kind of orbit toward you, and then away from you on that plane, they get a little bit closer together, they get kind of mixed up in their order, because it’ll be further away, let’s say like, I was closest, but further away, and then Ganymede, which is further away, swung to the front sight of Jupiter, and then it’s just much closer, apparently to it than what I would be. So there’s kind of this mixed match that can happen. And it was cool to have that identified or explained as well as it was in that in that comments fun.
Yeah, that was really helpful. It was cool. Seeing Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it. So from Jupiter out, we have IO and that’s like a lava planet. Yeah, pretty much and then after that, we have Europa which is an ice planet ice planet. Yeah. And then we have Ganymede Jamie the getting Ganymede and Callisto and Ganymede is the biggest one the biggest one. And then is there anything special about Callisto or anything interesting about that? I
know both Callisto and Ganymede appear to be more Rocky and and larger kind of kind of similar to our moon, you know, where it has impact craters. It has kind of some geological features to it. But a lot of those are impacts are of like title volcanic stuff that had happened in the past or something like that, but really relatively they’re not as active as what I owe would be Or as dynamic as what Europa would be. Okay. Yeah, it’s interesting see, like the surface of Europa changes a lot. It’s really smooth because it’s water. And so I think as it rotates, it melts and refreezes the water. And so as we take an image of it, well, you can see a lot of times like the history remarked on the land, because, you know, it gets impacted by a crater or something like that, and it stays for a long time to observe it. The interesting, like so if we look at Calista, we look at our moon, we look at Ganymede, you see these impact craters, you see these scars on the land. But on Europa, what we identify is that it’s really smooth, are these ice fractures kind of melt and sa a melt or thaw and freeze and thaw and freeze. And that kind of erases the land. So it gets really smooth or just has kind of this ice texture to it? Instead of you know, something more complex, like craters and impact craters, that sort of thing? That’s cool. Yeah, it’s kind of a school fact stuff to go through. But I think that wraps up just about everything that we had to speak about for this episode of the night sky podcast. You had anything else to talk about Marina? No, I think we’ve covered everything pretty well. I think it’d be pretty cool. And yeah, given that it’s the Chinese New Year, and it’s the new moon. I went and doing a bunch of research on on like lunar calendars, lunisolar calendars, how that’s kind of culturally in the past. Really interesting stuff. I’m excited to go through it. But I think that’ll be for the next episode of the night sky podcast. And for this episode, on behalf of Marina Hanson, my name is Billy Newman. And thank you for listening to this episode of the night sky.