Observation 3.7

Try to see if you can find and name the constellations...

Okay, here are the answers!

Date: March 1, 2014
Time: 7:00pm-8:45 pm

Observation:
Well, first off today was Astronomy Night. That is a day in which my astronomy class has a star gaze that is open to the public. This was actually my first time ever going to a star gaze and it was a pretty awesome experience. I learned a lot more about the stars and the constellations. These pictures that I have above, however, were taken at my house not at my school.

When I got to my school, it was very, very dark, obviously, and everyone could only use red light to see things; no white light from flashlights and phones! (That's because white light destroys your purple vision which is the chemical formed in your eyes that enable you to see in the dark although it takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust)There was actually a pretty good turn up! There were a lot of little kids and adults and we all got to show them the constellations in the sky. There were telescopes stationed in certain parts of the area in which it was focused on specific constellations or stars.

Now, I am going to go into the specifics of what I saw in each telescope:

One of the telescopes was positioned towards the Pleiades which is in the constellation Taurus the Bull. If you look at my pictures you can see that the Pleiades sort of looks like a triangle or even shaped somewhat like the Little Dipper. What the Pleiades actually is, is it's a cluster of stars and its one of the closest ones to Earth as well as the other cluster, the Hyades which is also in Taurus (the Hyades is actually the head of the bull). Fun Fact: Not many people know that the Pleiades in Japanese is Subaru. Yes, that is where the actual car brand, Subaru, name derived from, which is also why its symbol is a cluster of stars. Brain Blast! It was amazing how clearly you could see through the telescope at the cluster; it had a beehive sort of shape to it.

Another telescope was positioned at an open cluster, I think in the constellation Orion (I am not very sure if this was the constellation). Anyways, there is actually an open cluster in Orion, it is in the Orion nebula, also called Messier object 42, which is located below Orion's Belt. An open cluster is basically a breeding ground or the birthplace of many stars with hundreds of stars in the cluster (a globular is also a type of star cluster however they are usually older with hundreds of thousands of stars forming and aging there). When looking through the telescope I could see many blue stars, which can indicate that they are younger or that they are blue giants. Fun Fact: The two brightest stars in Orion is Betelgeuse and Rigel.

Another one was focused on one of the stars in the constellation Gemini the Twins. This star was Castor, one of the two twins. What is really cool about this star is that with the naked eye, the star looks like one star, but through a telescope you can that it is really a binary star (two stars that revolve around each other)! Through the telescope you were able to see the binary star although split was not dramatic. Fun Fact: The other twin is called Pollux.

Now my favorite section was the telescope that was pointed at the planet Jupiter, which was located in the constellation Gemini. I thought that this was the coolest and the prettiest one out of them all! It was amazing on how clear you could actually see Jupiter as well as its moons! (4 to be exact). What made it better was that you could actually see the gas streaks on Jupiter! In all honesty, this totally boggled my mind because I had never seen any other planet through a telescope, and to have it look so clear and pretty close was all the better! It just amazes me how far we have gotten in this world and its crazy to think that we have better technology that enables us to look even further into space!

Honestly, just seeing pictures of stars, or clusters of planets are just one thing, they don't have much to it really. But to actually be able to see these things through telescopes although they might not be in that high of a resolution is ABSOLUTELY CRAZY! My mind just can't grasp on how complex our solar system is let alone our Earth...

Well, besides all that craziness, I have even more good news!... I found more constellations in the sky! I am not going to go in depth was each of the new ones I found because I think I had you for enough time, also because I need other things to talk about next week... But the constellations that I finally took a picture of were the constellations Cassiopeia the Queen, Perseus the Hero, Leo the Lion and Monoceros the Unicorn.

There is going to be a lot of exciting things to talk about next time so don't forget to come back a look! Also, if you ever hear of a local star gaze of some sort, (Hey! You never know you might find one.) go to one! I promise you, you will learn a lot! And remember, NO WHITE LIGHTS! See you next week!