Let’s say I was 13 degrees north of the equator. Let’s also say that there was a bright low-lying star/planet in the southern sky. How would I find out what it was?
Doesn’t the New York Times’ weather page have a few skywatching notes? I left mine at home…
Oh, vix, I don’t mean Dustin Hoffman and Danny Glover.
Seriously, yes, NYT does have a report, but I was in Barbados (where I can actually see stars). The star/planet I’m referring to was so bright I could have sworn it was an airplane.
Several years ago when I developed a mild interest in star gazing (as opposed to lapping up “big picture” TV astronomy shows), I was introduced to a shareware program called SkyGlobe.
Although I have no idea as to whether it is still being developed, the last version I used was 3.6, which was relatively small in size, ran in DOS and supported VGA. Hopefully it’s available as a download from the Net.
SkyGlobe allows you to enter your location on the planet, then orients itself to your perspective. All of the major observable astronomic targets are included, as are name lables for the stars, planets and constellations.
Hopefully this will solve your problem.
Well Saxie, knowing you stayed in Worthing, I got a lot of information from the webiste heavens-above.com. I entered that city and I got a list of celestial events visible from there.
It’s a cool site. You can enter your home coordinates and bookmark the resulting index whenever you want to know what’s up. Heh. Heh.
I also got a full sky map based on the approximate time you saw your alleged planet. You said you saw it in the southwest. It could be Jupiter, but while it is visible it’s not as bright as say Venus would be, AFAIK. It could be you saw Sirius in Canis major. It’s the brightest star in the night sky and was in the SW.
Just a guess though, and we do have smarter astronomy folk than myself orbiting around here. So take it for what its worth
[Edited by Alphagene on 04-27-2001 at 10:08 AM]
Thank you, Dvous and Alphie! I will do some searches and report back.
Okay, according to the link from Alphagene (thank you!), the star was the most easterly one in the Carina constillation (just below constillation Puppis).
This site lists the stars in the constillation Carina, but I have no idea how to read the data! Any help appreciated.
:hangs head:
Sorry about my terrible spelling.
After a few more searches, I found the answer:
Canopus or(alpha)Carinae at magnitude -0.72 is the second brightest appearing star in the sky. It is a yellow-white supergiant 1200 light years away. It is named after the pilot of the fleet of King Menelaos, and appropriately enough this star is now often used as a guide for navigating spacecraft.
Thanks, again!
SaxFace wrote:
“HR number” is the number for this star in the Hoffleit Catalog of Bright Stars (sometimes called the Harvard catalog).
“Starname” here gives the Bayer greek-letter designation of the star for the first 10 entries, and the IAU variable-star designation for the rest of 'em.
“RA” stands for “Right Ascension.” It’s the number of hours, minutes, and seconds this star is to the east of the “equinox point”. In other words, it’s used for designating the star’s west-east position in the sky. One hour of right ascension is 15 degrees on the celestial sphere. The “(2000)” after the “RA” means that these Right Ascensions are the positions the stars had on 1-January-2000. (Nearby stars appear to move a tiny bit from year to year as they hurtle through interstellar space.)
“DECL” stands for “Declination”. It’s the number of degrees, minutes, and seconds north of the “celestial equator” a star is. A negative declination means the star is south of the celestial equator. The North Star has a declination of about 90 degrees, while an object direcly above the south pole would have a declination of -90 degrees.
“Spectraltype” is the Spectral Class and Luminosity Class for the star. The Spectral Class is usually a single capital letter in the sequence OBAFGKM (don’t ask!) followed by a one-digit number. It indicates how hot the star is. The Luminosity Class is a capitalized roman numeral. It indicates how big the star is – the lower the numeral, the bigger the star. Our sun is “G2 V”. Alpha Carinae is “F0 II”, which means it’s both hotter and considerably larger than the sun is. The “pec” entry for Eta Carinae means its spectrum is “peculiar,” which is another way of saying we have no f*cking clue of how to classify it.
“mag(V)” is the apparent visual magnitude of the star, i.e. how bright the star appears to the human eye here on Earth. The magnitude scale backwards – a brighter star has a LOWER magnitude number than a dimmer star does. It is also logarithmic. A magnitude 3.6 star would be 2-and-a-half times brighter than a magnitude 4.6 star, which would in turn be 2-and-a-half times brighter than a magnitude 5.6 star. Alpha Carinae has a negative magnitude, which means it’s really REALLY bright.
B-V is the color index. It’s the difference between how bright the star is when seen through a “blue” filter, and how bright the star is when seen through a “yellow” (visual) filter. The higher the B-V value, the farther toward the yellow/red end of the spectrum the star’s color is; the lower the B-V value, the farther toward the blue/violet end of the spectrum the star’s color is.
Incidentally, that chart did not list ALL the stars in Carina. It listed only those stars VISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE. There are gazillions more stars than this in the Carina constellation when viewed through a powerful enough telescope.
While the star suggested by others is a valid candidate, it’s important for us to know the date and time you’re observing. We can validate if it IS Canopus by:
A) Using a star wheel - usually designed for +40N in the USA - you can see what stars are visible during your time of observation. Make mental note of one constellation shwon on the wheel at that time.
B) Using a star chart or atlas showing ALL constellations, you can then find the Right Ascension (RA) for the constellation of which you made mental note. RA is shown in hours (hrs).
C) Using the same chart or text, find out if Canopus has the same (or about the same) RA. If so, then that’s your star.
In other words, the Northern sky corresponds to the Southern sky in this manner. And, from so close to the equator, you see a good portion of both northern and southern night skies. (Cool!)
Hope this helps!
- Jinx