Archives for the 'stars' Category
Arcturus
Published on 1 Jun 2007 at 4:18 pm.
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From mid-northern latitudes this time of year, if you go outside a little after sunset and look up, you’ll see a very bright star nearly overhead. That is the star Arcturus. It is actually the third brightest star in the sky, shining with magnitude -0.05. In fact, Arcturus is the brightest star north of the […]
MWC 922 Nebula
Published on 28 Apr 2007 at 8:10 am.
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Filed under nebula, stars.
A team of astronomers led by Peter Tuthill (University of Sydney) and James Loyd (Cornell University) has found a rather remarkable nebula. It looks like a square! In fact, they have nicknamed the nebula the “Red Square.” Well, actually, it isn’t really square, but it sure looks that way in a photograph. […]
SN 1987A, 20 years later
Published on 23 Feb 2007 at 1:32 pm.
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20 years ago today, I was in graduate school. Though I didn’t hear about it for a couple of days, Ian Shelton had discovered a supernova. Then, I heard that the first supernova of the year, SN 1987A (the second, if another were found, would be called SN 1987B, the third SN 1987C, […]
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V1280 Scorpii (Nova Scorpii 2007)
Published on 18 Feb 2007 at 6:27 am.
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I recently got word that a nova recently discovered in Scorpius had become one of the brightest in several years. It was even reportedly naked eye bright! Novae tend to change quickly (they are variable stars, after all), so I really wanted to check it out first before posting anything. Naturally, these […]
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Canopus
Published on 15 Feb 2007 at 5:32 pm.
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A little after sunset this time of year, Orion is at its hightest point in the sky. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, this puts it due south. Down and to the left of Orion is the star Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, other than the […]
Castor and Pollux
Published on 10 Feb 2007 at 6:06 pm.
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This time of year, Orion is high in the sky in the evenings. I’ve already posted about the constellation Orion in the past, so today I want to talk about two stars northeast of Orion. Go out and look towards Orion. In the northern hemisphere, you will see two stars up and […]
Stellar Spectral Types
Published on 6 Feb 2007 at 12:13 am.
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If you read Sky and Telescope or Astronomy or any other astronomy magazine, you will occasionally see some reference to “G Type stars” or perhaps “B Type stars.” What do these letters mean?
Well, to answer that we go back over a century to the the first studies of stellar spectral. When the light […]
