Observation 3.6

Look for Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major.

We are getting closer...

Well... here it is...

Yup.

Okay, the picture is getting better...

 

Date: February 22, 2014
Time: 8:33 - 8:50 pm

Observation: When I went outside today and I looked up at the sky, surprisingly enough, I couldn't find any new constellations, or at least I didn't notice them or the stars were not bright enough for me to see them. But as I looked on with hope that I might have something to record for this week, it sprung upon me that I really wanted to take a zoomed in picture of a star. Now, don't get me wrong, I know I wasn't going to get far with my Sony camera but I wanted to see what would come up, if anything, and this is what I got!

Well, the first star I saw tonight, was Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. As I zoomed up to the star, it was quite difficult trying to steady my camera because you know how it is if you zoom in your camera to the fullest, the slightest movement and what you are trying to focus on is gone! Well, after struggling with my camera and the camera stand for a good 10 minutes, I finally found Sirius and I took a picture of it. I was not satisfied. As you can tell the first close-up picture I took was the third picture above. It looked like that because my camera was moving and same thing with the next picture. But after I got the camera steady and I took a picture, the star was still not a perfect circle, in fact it was a different color!

Well that, my friends, was due to atmospheric blurring! You see, the atmosphere is a very windy place. Basically, there are currents of wind and a lot of molecules floating and whisking around up in the sky. Now, there is already an inaccuracy of where we think stars are positioned due to how far away we are from them, but because of our windy atmosphere, this makes matters worse. With molecules moving in the sky, the light is actually diffracted which is why there seems to be a halo surrounding the star, even in a clear, still night. Also, due to the windy atmosphere, sometimes the star seems to shift a little, or it will seem to make, as we call it, a twinkling star! So yes, that star in the song that you have heard all your life, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, was never an actual twinkling star, but just a normal (I am using the word "normal" very lightly because every star is unique in its own way) star in which atmospheric blurring is the cause of its dreamy presence. Sorry.

Anyways, be sure to always wonder about things and try to find the answer to them, but don't be surprised if you don't get a straightforward answer, because some things are best to be left unanswered. Rather you should just take the time to be thankful for those things and keep following the stars!