Scorpius as depicted in Urania's Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London c.1825.
Have you ever wondered why the Orion Nebula has a sword and a belt? Hmm, who uses a sword? A warrior! But what could this warrior be fighting in the sky?
Orion is they mythological warrior and hunter who was friends with the goddess Artemis. They would hunt together and have many adventures. Pretty cool deal to go hunting with a goddess, huh?
Unfortunately for Orion, he developed a really bad attitude. He thought that since he was such a good hunter that he should go and kill every animal on earth! Not cool at all. Continue reading →
So how has the stargazing been going? Had any difficulties with finding the Northern Cross? Now that you’re starting to get your bearings, I’ll regale you with some interesting facts about these shimmering dots of light. You might want to review our lesson on star types a few weeks ago.
I’m sure you’ve done your own research and know that Vega, one of the brightest stars in the Lyra constellation is an A-type star glowing with bluish light. Believe it or not, Vega is 55 times brighter than the Sun and is pretty close to us –only 26 light years away!
That brings us to Arcturus (ark-TOOR-us), a cool K-type star that also just happens to be a GIANT star. It’s about 30 times bigger across than the Sun and more than a hundred times brighter. Arcturus is located in the Bootes system an is an orange-yellow star about 36 light years away. If you’re having trouble spotting Arcturus, just follow the curve of stars in the handle of the Big Dipper moving away from the dipper. Continue that curve from the last star in the handle for a distance about equal to the width of the Big Dipper and you can’t miss it.
And now, let me introduce you to the brightest star in the Scorpio constellation. This is the giant star that makes Arcturus look like a small pebble. This super giant M-class star is named Antares! He’s that orange-red star that you see in the photo. Antares is 700 times larger than your Earth Sun. If we could pick up Antares (and Bong has tried — but that’s another story!) and put it into your solar system in place of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars would all be inside of Antares! Yep, it’s that big.
And even though it’s considered to be a cool M-type star it gives off 9,000 times more light than your Sun does! But for all it’s massive size and power it has an embarrassing secret. Now don’t laugh, but for all it’s enormous size it contains only about 10 or 15 times as much material as the Sun. So it’s really like an oversized, supercharged piece of puffy popcorn!
That concludes our Summer Skies series for the moment. Now it’s time to put your knowledge to the test. Can you identify any of star types we talked about around your own planet?
