Archives for the 'stars' Category
Algieba
Published on 26 Feb 2008 at 11:06 pm.
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Filed under stars.
During the lunar eclipse last week, Saturn was just below the Moon, and the star Regulus was just above. A number of my students, though, asked “What’s that other star up off to the left?” I told them that the star’s name was Algieba, and that it was part of Leo, the […]
Flattened Stars
Published on 11 Jan 2008 at 1:26 pm.
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Filed under conference blogging, stars.
Yesterday I saw a poster by Ming Zhao, a graduate student at University of Michigan. He works with John Monnier. The poster was presenting CHARA interferometric data on the stars Rasalhague (Alpha Ophiuchi) and Alderamin (Alpha Cephei). This is similar to work that was released earlier this year on the star Altair. […]
Weighing Polaris
Published on 8 Jan 2008 at 10:33 pm.
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Filed under conference blogging, stars.
About a year and a half ago, I did a posting on the star Polaris. For those of you who don’t know, Polaris is the name of the North Star. You can look at my previous posting for some additional information on the star. One interesting thing about Polaris that a lot […]
White Dwarf Pulsar
Published on 7 Jan 2008 at 11:07 pm.
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Filed under neutron stars, stars, white dwarfs.
In introductory astronomy classes, we talk about white dwarfs and pulsars. They are generally thought of as completely separate end products of stellar evolution. A star of less that 8 solar masses (initial mass) will shed its outer layers into space and leave behind a degenerate object known as a white dwarf. […]
Wolf 359
Published on 25 Sep 2007 at 10:17 pm.
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Located in Leo, somewhat south of the classic figure of the Lion, almost on the ecliptic, is a very tiny star called Wolf 359.
Wolf 359 is not very impressive to look at. First of all, it is dim. Shining with a visual magnitude of about 13.46, Wolf 359 is nearly 1000 times dimmer […]
Antares
Published on 14 Aug 2007 at 9:12 pm.
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On Saturday night, I gave a public presentation for a star party. Part of that involved pointing out some of the stars and constellations visible. Currently, the brightest thing in the southern sky is the planet Jupiter. You see it in twilight before any of the stars. But, once it gets dark enough, you see […]
The first parallax measurements
Published on 28 Jun 2007 at 1:01 am.
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Filed under astronomy, stars.
Early last week, I wrote about parallax and distance measurements. This is a follow-up post to that one.
Stellar parallax is very small, and thus correspondingly difficult to measure. The closest star has a parallax of 0.772 arc-seconds (that is nearly 1/4700 of a degree). That is a very tiny angle to measure, […]
